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By Kaitlin Lewis
Night Reporter
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A senior skip day gathering on the beach in the Isle of Palms, South Carolina, erupted into gunfire Friday evening, leaving six people with gunshot wounds, police said.
Isle of Palms Police Chief Kevin Cornett told a group of reporters Friday evening that at around 5:20 p.m., a "couple of altercations" broke out within a crowd of about 100 people who had gathered on the beach. Cornett said that during one of those altercations, several shots were fired.
As of Friday evening, police knew of six people who were shot. Some victims were transported by emergency medical services to nearby hospitals while others self-transported.
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Cornett said that police have detained "several individuals" for weapons charges as they continue to investigate but added that they "don't know that any of them are necessarily the individual that fired."
A video of the crowd fleeing the beach was shared to Twitter by Shannon Watts, a gun- control activist and founder of the group Moms Demand Action. Police said that most people in the gathering were likely around age 18.
Another Twitter user posted a video of the crowd gathered underneath a bridge along the South Carolina coast. The video cuts out as sounds of gunshots are heard over the crowd's noise.
Most of the victims were believed to be in their teens, with at least one in their mid-30s, police said. Cornett said that the older victim was likely a bystander of the larger gathering and was not participating in the senior skip day activities.
The conditions of the victims had not been released at the time of publication. In a preliminary report, the city of the Isle of Palms posted on Twitter that four of the victims had been transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Isle of Palms police asked for assistance "from as many [law] agencies as we could" as soon as the altercation broke out, Cornett told reporters.
"There was an outpour," he added. "Almost every law enforcement agency in the Tri-County area sent officers to assist us with this, as well as federal and state partners who just called and started sending people to assist us the moment we asked for help."
According to a report from NBC News affiliate WCBD, police were already planning to "step up" patrols along the beaches of Isle of Palm ahead of spring break. Some school districts in Charleston County are off for a week starting on Monday.
Newsweek has reached out to Cornett via email for further comment.
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