I’ve watched enough disaster movies to know what a fleeing crowd looks like — people scattering, screaming, panicking. It’s one thing if movie extras are running from the Chitauri in the Avengers, but it’s another deeply disturbing, unnecessary Twitter video when it’s a crowd of Milwaukee Bucks’ fans trying to watch their team close out the Celtics in Game 6 of the conference semifinals.
No, I don’t have a link to fans running from a shooting that injured three people a block away from the Deer District on Friday night because you’ve probably already seen it, and if you’re interested, it’s a quick Google search away. All of the victims — two men in their mid-to-late 20s and a 16-year-old girl — are expected to survive.
The number of fans who were watching the game in the popular viewing area outside Fiserv Forum was in the range of 11,000, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, so of course hysteria is going to spread rapidly.
It’s extremely depressing that a lack of casualties makes it OK to readily share footage of people who, in the moment, probably thought they were running for their lives. For all they knew it could’ve been some deranged mass shooter with pockets full of munitions. And we still don’t know if it wasn’t even though it qualifies as a mass shooting. A 19-year-old was taken into custody in connection with the incident, according to Milwaukee Police Capt. Warren Allen.
And then, later in the evening, only a few blocks from the shooting near the arena, 17 people were shot. All of those who were wounded in that incident also are expected to survive, and 10 people were taken into custody, with nine firearms recovered, officials said.
If you add in the 20-year-old man who was shot and injured on North Water Street near West Highland Avenue, 21 people in all were victims of gun violence in downtown Milwaukee on Friday night. His injuries also are non-life threatening, so that’s good news.
So, yeah, I feel fine not embedding that tweet and depriving readers of a massing shooting clip to start their Saturday.