Davis police seek suspect in shooting that injured 3 at Picnic Day celebration
Police in Davis on Sunday afternoon were still looking for the shooter or shooters who injured three people in a city park, sowing chaos during the community's annual town-and-gown celebration of Picnic Day, an open house to welcome prospective students, local families and alumni to the UC Davis campus.
Shots rang out at the northeastern portion of Community Park in Davis in the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon, injuring two teens and a 24-year-old, just as a large group of people was wrapping up a permitted gathering there, police said.
'On a day that many of us would normally enjoy and celebrate in Davis, our community's sense of safety and security was shaken,' Mayor Bapu Vaitla and Police Chief Todd Henry said in a joint statement emailed to The Sacramento Bee.
The two leaders said they are working with state and federal investigators to find the culprit or culprits and determine a motive for the shooting. But they said that the information gathered so far indicates that the shooting 'was not motivated by a desire to randomly harm community members.'
By Sunday morning, all that was left of the shooting scene was a single strand of police tape wrapped around a pole on the northeast side of Community Park in Davis. Groups of adults played cricket, while bicyclists zoomed along the trails and kids flung frisbees on a sunny, quiet day.
But the shooting sparked unease in Davis, a city of 66,000 that reported just one homicide in 2022. That same year, police reported an 80% increase in aggravated assaults, and in 2023 a former UC Davis student experiencing mental illness was arrested and charged with killing two people and wounding another in a stabbing spree that took place almost exactly two years before the Picnic Day shooting on Saturday.
Several people at the park and on campus on Sunday said they were shocked to learn of the shooting in their normally quiet city.
'I was just really surprised and concerned,' said Joe Bender, 22, a student who is majoring in linguistics and Spanish. 'It's just not the sort of thing to happen on Picnic Day in Davis.'
Yun Mu, 22, a communications major walking his dog Yuni, said he received an alert about the shooting on his phone, and was surprised to see that it was about a serious incident instead of the usual pranks, bike accidents and road closures that more frequently pop up.
'This is really an uncommon event for us, this particular situation,' said Davis Police spokesperson Dan Beckwith after the shooting on Saturday. 'In my 18 years, we've never had anything like this.'
On Sunday, Beckwith said that investigators still did not know how many shooters were involved in the incident, and had not yet taken anyone into custody.
In their statement on Sunday, Vaitla and Henry said the department had committed substantial resources to the investigation and were working with federal and regional law enforcement agencies.
Those injured during the shooting were taken to a nearby hospital. Police said the injuries were not life-threatening.
Officers were already in the area as part of stepped up Picnic Day patrols and rushed over as soon as they heard gunfire. An earlier report that someone was trampled as people in the park fled the scene was likely not accurate, Beckwith said Saturday.
The violence, a shocking contrast to the family-friendly events like cockroach races and plant giveaways that had taken place at the university earlier in the day, did not occur on the UC Davis campus.
It was not immediately clear if those gathered at the park were there for the many alumni and family events that take place in the city of Davis while the UC Davis festival is underway, officials said.
The university expressed sorrow at the shooting in a statement released on Saturday, saying it was 'disheartening' that the shooting took place as thousands gathered to celebrate.
'Picnic Day is a day when tens of thousands of visitors join us as we celebrate our people, programs and community,' the statement said. 'Our hearts go out to our students who organize such a massive effort on campus, and to all those in the city of Davis, where activities often peaceably continue.'
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