Officers patrolling the area heard gunfire shortly after 11:45 p.m. on Cherry Street and the area reached a site of “several parties exchanging gunfire and numerous people fleeing the area,” police said.
Multiple shooting victims were taken to a hospital for treatment, the police sergeant said. Jeremy Eames. Four are expected to survive while two have life-threatening injuries, he said. Most of those shot were teenagers or in their 20s, he added.
“We had large groups of minors walking around the city center on that date and we believe it is from that group where the shooting took place,” he said. Police said they had arrested at least one person in connection with the shooting.
There have been 221 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Armed Violence Archive. A mass shooting is defined as an incident with at least four people shot, excluding any shooter. The shooting also comes days after an 18-year-old man used a legally purchased AR-15 rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, again raising questions about whether these weapons should be legally available.
The location of the Saturday night shoot is less than a mile from the Tennessee Aquarium and the city’s boardwalk.
Patrick Hickey, who was driving for Uber and Lyft on Saturday night, told CNN he was parked in his usual place waiting for another trip when he heard at least two dozen shots. Hickey works full-time as a first responder (Uber and Lyft jobs are on the side), so he moved on to the action.
“I helped two victims, one with a head injury.” said Hickey. “I couldn’t run in the other direction or leave knowing there were a lot of injured people.”
One of the victims ended up on a sidewalk near her car, so she grabbed a T-shirt from her vehicle and put pressure on the wound, she said.
“(People were) screaming for help, the relatives of the victims were also there,” he said. “The police were trying to get everyone back so we could help the victims. It was chaos for a minute.”
Hickey added that on Sunday morning he noticed that his shoes had the blood of one of the victims.
“I’m lucky to be able to return home with my family unharmed, but it was a very scary situation.” Hickey said in a Facebook post. “Please hug your family a lot because this is becoming commonplace in the US.”
CNN’s Eric Levenson and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.