A 15-year-old boy was killed and three adults, including a police officer, were shot when gunfire erupted Sunday night at an unauthorized music event in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood known for its nightlife, the authorities said.

The Metropolitan Police Department had shut down the event, known as Moechella, a free street festival near the city’s culturally storied corner of 14th and U Streets Northwest, after violence earlier in the evening, including a fight among attendees, the police said.

As police and emergency medical workers cleared the area to treat people who were injured while fleeing a disturbance, “several individuals were shot,” Chief Robert J. Contee III of the Metropolitan Police Department said at a news conference late Sunday.

Chief Contee said that the officer who was shot was expected to recover and that the two other adults were in stable condition. He did not say whether a suspect or suspects were in custody. The circumstances of the shooting remained unclear late Sunday, but he said that police officers did not fire their weapons, and he suggested that all four people had been shot with the same gun.

Several other people were injured by having their legs or ankles trampled on as attendees fled the scene, he added.

Chief Contee said he wanted to ensure that people would be held accountable for holding events without a permit.

“This is one of the reasons we don’t want unpermitted events taking place in our city,” he said. “Unfortunately, things like this can happen when you have the wrong mix of people, or people who introduce firearms into a situation.”

The chief expressed frustration at the number of illegal firearms in the area, noting that police officers had discovered several such weapons earlier in the evening.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/us/dc-shooting-moechella.html