Police arrest suspect in shooting at Ohio festival that wounded 12

Eljay Crisp-Carr was arrested on Thursday, and police are still searching for another suspect in Toledo shooting

Police in Ohio have arrested a suspect in a recent shooting that wounded 12 people at a crowded weekend neighborhood street festival.

Eljay Crisp-Carr, 20, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with 11 counts of felonious assault. Court documents do not list an attorney for him, and no one answered a call to a phone number associated with him on Friday morning.

Authorities had also issued an arrest warrant for the other suspect, Ka Nye Taylor, but he had not been caught as of Friday. Phone numbers for Taylor or his family members were not available or found in online directories.

The gunfire in Toledo broke out on 6 June during the Old West End festival at a park filled with tents, music and food trucks in a neighborhood dotted with Victorian homes. Police said a fight between rival groups apparently escalated into two people shooting at each other, although they were not among the wounded.

In a criminal complaint filed in Toledo municipal court, a detective described video showing Crisp-Carr participating in the fight. After another man started shooting, Crisp-Carr moved away from the group but then turned and opened fire himself, the detective wrote. He was seen firing indiscriminately into the crowd, the detective wrote.

The detective said she used witness statements, social media and law enforcement photos to identify Crisp-Carr.

Hundreds of people were attending the annual festival in a historic district of Toledo, a city on the western edge of Lake Erie about 55 miles (90km) south-west of Detroit. Organizers canceled the event’s second day because of the shooting.

The violence sent terrified bystanders fleeing while others rushed to help the injured alongside medics and police. The victims ranged from teenagers to one person in their 60s.

At a news conference on Tuesday, the police chief and other city officials praised officers and good Samaritans who quickly offered help to the victims.

“We saw strangers who were shocked and frightened by the violence they just saw, they jumped into action,” said the local chief of fire and rescue, Allison Armstrong. “They helped others by placing tourniquets, dressing wounds, applying pressure and comforting those victims until additional help could arrive.”

According to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive , as of Friday, the Toledo shooting was among more than 180 mass shootings in the US so far this year.

The archive classifies a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed.

The US annually registers high numbers of mass shootings, prompting many to call on the federal government to implement more substantial gun control. But Congress has not implemented such measures over the years.