Two men were shot to death and dozens of other people were injured when gunfire broke out at a neighborhood block party early Sunday in southern Georgia, state law enforcement officials said.
Deputies from the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office were on patrol at the party around 1:25 a.m. when shots were fired, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. Vienna sits about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of Atlanta and about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the Florida border, the AP reported.
Authorities had not said whether any suspects were in custody or being sought, and they had not offered a motive. The GBI and the sheriff did not immediately respond to the AP’s requests for more details.
What We Know So Far
Deputies found two people dead and several others who had been shot, the GBI said. Dooly County Coroner Brett Walls told the AP the dead were men ages 20 and 23, both pronounced dead at the scene with fatal gunshot wounds, and he called the scene “horrific.” The Guardian, writing earlier, said the pair had not yet been identified.
Counts of the injured differed by source. The GBI statement, as relayed by the AP, put the number of injured at 35 and did not say how many of them had been shot or how seriously they were hurt. The Guardian reported at least 25 injured. Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy told the local outlet WMAZ that about 25 people were taken to the hospital and that as many as 35 may have been wounded, according to the Guardian. Victims were taken to several regional hospitals, the GBI said.
The crowd was large, Peavy told WMAZ: more than 1,000 people had gathered, and shots were fired toward about 50 people in two locations roughly a block apart just after 1 a.m., with deputies monitoring the gathering when it happened, the Guardian reported. The GBI’s account places the gunfire at the 900 block of Pine Street and the two bodies at the 600 block of Pine Street, which sits farther apart than the sheriff’s description of locations about a block from each other. The Guardian described the event as a homecoming block party, while the GBI and AP called it a neighborhood block party.
The Dooly County Sheriff’s Office asked the GBI to assist with the investigation, the bureau said. The two victims will be taken to the GBI Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsies, and when the investigation is finished the case file will go to the Cordele Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office for review and prosecution.
Separate Shooting in Baltimore
The Guardian also reported on a second shooting this weekend, in which a 12-year-old girl was killed and three other people were wounded Saturday at Leon Day Park in Baltimore, near a youth football event.
Police Commissioner Richard Worley said two suspects were being sought after two types of cartridges were found at the scene, and that investigators believe an argument over a parking space escalated into an exchange of gunfire between two people, per the Guardian. The girl was a bystander at a nearby field who was hit when one of the shooters fired multiple rounds, Worley said. A 25-year-old woman with the girl and two men, ages 23 and 28, were also wounded; police said none of the three was believed to have life-threatening injuries, according to the Guardian.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said the shooting began with an argument between adults. “Two grown men got into an argument, and now a 12-year-old is gone,” he told reporters, as quoted by the Guardian.
Why This Matters
The Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan reference resource, counted at least 355 mass shootings in the United States through Sunday, the 277th day of 2026, the Guardian reported. The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people are killed or wounded, a threshold that is broader than the definitions some other databases use for mass killings.
The Guardian noted that the United States has long had high rates of such shootings, which has fueled calls from some quarters for stronger federal gun control, while Congress has not passed such measures over the years.
What Happens Next
The GBI said its investigation is continuing and that autopsies on the two dead will be conducted. Authorities have not announced arrests in the Vienna shooting or said when they will release more information about the victims, the suspects or the motive. In Baltimore, police are still looking for the two suspects they believe exchanged gunfire.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Guardian
