SACRAMENTO, Calif -- Six people were killed and 12 injured before dawn Sunday in Sacramento when multiple shooters fired amid crowds as bars and nightclubs emptied for the night in the second mass shooting in five weeks in California's capital city, the police chief said.
Three of those killed were women and three were men, Police Chief Kathy Lester told reporters. Sgt. Zach Eaton, a police department spokesman, said investigators believe there were at least two shooters.
The suspects were still at large and authorities said they had recovered at least one firearm and were reviewing video footage posted to social media that showed what appeared to be an altercation before the gunfire broke out.
Detectives were trying to determine the sequence of events before the shooting and Eaton said they "don't know if that fight actually led to the shooting."
A police camera captured part of the shooting, Lester said, and investigators have located hundreds of pieces of evidence. A stolen handgun was found at the scene that Lester described as "really complex and complicated."
The crime scene stretched across multiple city blocks, with dozens of blue and yellow evidence markers dotting the pavement. Several of those who were wounded battled life-threatening gunshot injuries in hospitals.
A video posted on Twitter showed people running through the street amid the sounds of rapid gunfire in the city of about 525,000 located 75 miles from San Francisco.
The area where the violence occurred on the outskirts of the city's main entertainment district is packed with restaurants and bars. Nightclubs close at 2 a.m. and it's normal for streets to be full of people at that hour.
"This morning our city has a broken heart," Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. "We don't know all the facts but we know there were mass casualties in a very short amount of time."
Officers were patrolling the area near the shooting site two blocks from the Capitol at about 2 a.m. when they heard gunfire and rushed to the scene, Lester told reporters. They found a large crowd gathered and six people dead in the street.
Twelve other people were also shot and wounded in the melee and at least four of them suffered critical injuries, said officials. Police urged witnesses or anyone with recordings of the shooting to contact police.
"We're asking for the public's help in helping us to identify the suspects in this," Lester said.
Steinberg said in recent years it "has been a very difficult time in downtown Sacramento and Sacramento as a whole."
He added that the shooting "gives pause to our entire community" but urged people to continue visiting the area despite the recent violence.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his administration was working closely with law enforcement officials.
"What we do know at this point is that another mass casualty shooting has occurred, leaving families with lost loved ones, multiple individuals injured and a community in grief," he said.
Kay Harris, 32, told reporters she was asleep when one of her family members called to say they thought her brother Sergio Harris had been killed. She said she thought he had been at the London nightclub, which is near the shooting.
Harris spent the morning circling the block waiting for news.
"Very much so a senseless, violent act," she said.
Pamela Harris, Sergio Harris' mother, told The Sacramento Bee the family has not heard from him yet.
"We just want to know what happened to him," Pamela Harris told the newspaper. "Not knowing anything is just hard to face."
Information for this article was contributed by writers David Klepper and Stefanie Dazio of The Associated Press.