After four people were killed and 32 others, mostly teenagers, were injured in a shooting at a 16th birthday party in a small Alabama city on Saturday night, residents returned to work and school on Monday with no official information about who had opened fire or why.
On Monday evening, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said police were still processing evidence and had recovered shell cases from the shooting at the Mahogany Masterpiece dance studio in Dadeville, which has a population of about 3,000 people and is about 60 miles northeast of Montgomery. No evidence of high-powered rifle ammunition was found, the agency said in a statement.
The Tallapoosa County Coroner, Mike Knox, on Monday identified the four victims who died as Shaunkivia Nicole Smith, known as Keke, 17; Philstavious Dowdell, 19; Marsiah Emmanuel Collins, 19; and Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 23.
Community leaders, including the police, school officials and clergy members, described the town as close-knit. The shooting at about 10:34 p.m. on Saturday night shattered that placid atmosphere. Officials have not said if they have identified a suspect or suspects, made any arrests or found a motive.
Seven miles outside the city, on Highway 280, a digital billboard above an auto dealer had become a roadside memorial. One image said “Pray for Dadeville,” and the screen advanced through pictures of the victims, including Alexis Dowdell kissing her brother Phil on the cheek and Keke Nicole Smith smiling on the sidelines of a game.
“Dadeville is a very small community. It’s just really difficult,” Heidi Smith, a spokeswoman for Lake Martin Community Hospital in Dadeville, said at a news conference on Monday morning.
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The hospital treated 15 teenagers with gunshot wounds, she said. Six had been discharged and nine were transferred to other hospitals. Of the nine, five were in critical condition and four were in stable condition.
Ms. Smith said that the hospital staff had undergone training for shootings and other crises, but there was no way to actually prepare.
“It’s very traumatic in a health care setting, an emergency room setting, when you have one gunshot wound come through,” Ms. Smith said. “But when you have 15, and they are all teenagers — our staff has been through a lot.”
James Ryan, a native of Calera, Ala., who had moved to Dadeville in 2016 and chose to stay there because he found the city safe and quiet, lamented the violence taking young lives.
“I just hate that this happened here,” Mr. Ryan said. “There’s got to be something done about the guns.”
The United States is an extreme outlier for gun violence, especially in its high number of young victims, compared with similarly large and wealthy nations. In 2020, gun violence surpassed car accidents and disease to become the leading killer of children.
Dadeville had experienced a shooting with multiple victims in August 2016, when five people were shot at a party in the American Legion Hall, less than half a mile from the dance studio where the shooting took place on Saturday.
The dance studio is in an old bank building on North Broadnax, a main thoroughfare that runs though the downtown business district. On Monday morning, the American flag and the state flag flew at half-staff at city buildings and the front doors of the Dadeville Public Library were draped in ribbon-wreaths of black and gold, the local high school’s colors.
Two of the teenagers who were killed were seniors at Dadeville High School. One of them, Shaunkivia Nicole Smith, was a volleyball player and the team manager for the high school’s track team. She would have celebrated her 18th birthday four days before graduation, Michelle Hutchins, a second cousin, said on Monday evening.
As the sun set, Ms. Hutchins knelt in front of one of the two windows on either side of the entrance to the building that houses the dance studio. Two bullet holes made spider-web patterns in one of the windows.
“She was very athletic, very smart,” Ms. Hutchins. “She loved track and volleyball and always had a smile on her face.”
Michael Taylor, who coached the track team that Ms. Smith managed, said on Sunday that the shooting had occurred at a birthday party for the younger sister of one of the victims, Philstavious Dowdell, a member of the school’s football team. Mr. Dowdell had committed to Jacksonville State University. The head coach of the university’s football team, Rich Rodriguez, said in a statement that Mr. Dowdell was a “great young man with a bright future.”
Mr. Dowdell’s sister was a cheerleader who cheered for every sport at the high school and many of the athletes had come out to her party to celebrate, Mr. Taylor said.
A third victim, Corbin Dahmontrey Holston had played basketball and football at Dadeville High. A fourth, Marsiah Emmanuel Collins, 19, had played football at Opelika High School, about 26 miles southeast of Dadeville.
On Monday afternoon, Raven Tolbert, the founder and owner of Mahogany Masterpiece, cut down a banner that displayed its name, saying she did not want people to focus on where the shooting had occurred.
Ms. Tolbert, 25, who grew up in Dadeville, started the studio April 2021 after graduating from the local high school and earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Auburn University at Montgomery. She said it was the sort of venue she wished had existed when she was a girl.
The studio moved into the old bank building last October. Ms. Tolbert said it has hosted baby showers, banquets and other events, and that it remained “a place of all things love, family and dance.”
Still, she said, she was hurting like others in her community.
“A lot of people keep asking me if I’m OK,” Ms. Tolbert said. “At first I was responding that I was OK, but I’m not. And that’s what I’m telling people right now: ‘I’m not OK, but I will be OK.’”
Claire Fahy contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.