A gunman opened fire in a Little Rock club early Saturday, injuring three people and setting off a scramble of people racing to get out of the building, according to a police report and witnesses.
Little Rock officers arrived just after 1 a.m. Saturday at the Empire nightclub at 3315 W. Roosevelt Road and found three people with bullet wounds, a police report said.
A 25-year-old Little Rock woman was shot in her upper thigh and the bullet fractured her pelvis, according to the report. A 24-year-old woman from Marion was shot in her foot, and a 25-year-old Little Rock man was shot twice in the abdomen, the report said. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening, according to police.
The Empire club, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary on May 4, is a concert venue and dance club that sits next door to the Pulaski County jail.
For several weeks, the club had promoted a party to be held after a performance by Mike Epps.
Epps -- a stand-up comedian, actor and rapper -- performed Friday night at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock. Afterward, he headed to the Empire club for a late-night show. The club's hours are 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
One witness, who asked that she not be identified, said she arrived at the nightclub around 1 a.m. after celebrating her birthday Friday with a dinner downtown.
"The club was packed," she said. "There are four parking lots, and they were all full."
She and her friends found a parking spot, and while they were waiting for another friend to join them, she said she saw three screaming women run out through the lounge's door.
"One of them fell on the hood of her car," she said. "Then I saw two gentlemen bending down on the side of a car with guns. One of them, he cocked his handgun and that's when he started walking back toward the club.
"They went in there with guns, and I mean this was a packed club. You just see people running everywhere and screaming."
The woman said she immediately called the police and told them what she saw. The 911 operator stayed with her on the phone until officers arrived, the woman said.
A witness inside the club at the time of the shooting told police that she saw several people fighting, heard gunshots and then everyone began to run. At least one of the three people injured was shot while running from the nightclub, authorities said.
A video posted on social media shows a crowded room with multicolored lights flashing as people scream and get down on the floor. At least three pops can be heard in the video, though it's not clear whether they were gunshots.
Little Rock police spokesman Eric Barnes said police are called to the West Roosevelt Road area relatively often, but the club is not known to be a place where violence occurs.
Police said a witness saw a man unload a weapon and drive away from the club with two other people in a burnt-orange Dodge Charger or Challenger. No suspects had been identified in the case as of Saturday evening.
Calls to the nightclub's listed management were not returned by late Saturday.
Metro on 04/28/2019