5 injured in shooting at cemetery
By: Hailey Branson-potts
UNION CITY, CA – Five people were injured Thursday night in a shooting at a Bay Area cemetery, authorities said.
Police received multiple 911 calls about a shooting at Chapel of the Chimes cemetery in Hayward just after 7 p.m., the Union City Police Department said in a statement. The shooting happened near the main mortuary.
Officers initially found three people with gunshot wounds. They were taken to local hospitals. As police searched the area, they found another person with a gunshot wound “a distance away from the scene,” according to the statement.
Police said a local hospital later reported treating another person who had been shot at the cemetery and went to the hospital on their own.
Two people were in critical condition and three were in stable condition early Friday, police said. The names, ages and genders of those who were shot were not released.
The motive was unclear, and the shooters remain at large, police said. Authorities told reporters at the scene that they came upon a chaotic situation, where it was unclear who the victims and the suspects were.
The 146-year-old cemetery occupies 61 acres on the border of Hayward and Union City. At least one service was taking place inside the cemetery chapel when the shooting started outside, according to the cemetery’s website.
Kamille Varilla De Guzman, a Fremont resident who was attending a viewing in the chapel for her recently deceased mother, told KGO-TV that she heard gunshots and that when she arrived at the chapel, there was a pop-up tent in the parking lot where people were drinking and some had guns.
“It was like right outside my mom’s viewing,” she told the station. “We were on lockdown for an hour.”
Anyone with information about the shooting has been asked to contact Union City Police Det. J. Clubb at (510) 675-5227 or via email at joshuac@unioncity.org. To leave an anonymous tip, call (510) 675-5207 or email tips@unioncity.org.
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