Four people were shot dead at a crowded Halloween costume party at a house in Orinda in Northern California in the US, the county sheriff’s office said on Friday.
The shooting took place around 10:45 pm on Thursday at a house party with more than 100 people attending in an expensive neighbourhood of Orinda, a small city across the bay from San Francisco, the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Four people died in the shooting and several other people were injured, the statement said. The sheriff’s office has not publicly identified the victims or any suspects, Reuters reported.
Video footage broadcast by ABC7 News showed a person on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance and young people who appeared to be party guests, including some in costumes, walking in the street outside the house.
“Our whole neighbourhood heard it and then people were screaming and fleeing,” Chris Gade, who lives near the house, told reporters, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The party took place in a short-term rental home and had been advertised on social media, the Chronicle reported. The host of the party had rented it through the online listings service Airbnb and had told the house’s owner she was holding a reunion for only 12 people, the Chronicle reported, citing the house’s owner, Michael Wang.
Airbnb said it had removed the house from its website and had banned the person who had rented it from using the platform, the Chronicle reported.