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By Rachel Dobkin
Weekend Reporter
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Four people, two men and two women, were injured during a shooting at Virginia State University early Wednesday morning, according to police.
Authorities responded to the shooting that occurred in a large crowd at the university, which is roughly a 30-minute drive south of Richmond, around 12:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Chesterfield County Police said.
Four people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, and no police officers discharged their guns, according to police. Since the start of 2024, there have been a total of 10,556 gun deaths and 20,335 people injured by firearms, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
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Two suspects were taken into custody, 21-year-old Xavier Gordon and 21-year-old Clyde White Jr. Gordon was charged with brandishing a firearm and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. White was charged with brandishing a firearm, according to police. There is no further threat to the community in relation to the shooting, police said.
Classes for the fall semester at the university start next week, but this week, freshmen and student leaders are on campus early, according to Gwen Williams Dandridge, a spokesperson for the university. Dandridge said that none of the shooting victims or suspects are enrolled at the university for the upcoming semester.
County and university police are investigating the shooting.
Newsweek reached out to the Chesterfield County Police for further updates and Virginia State University via email on Wednesday morning.
Gun violence continues to plague America, with 347 mass shootings since the beginning of 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that catalogs gun violence in the U.S. The Gun Violence Archive classifies mass shootings as four or more shot and/or killed in a single incident.
There have been at least 35 school shootings in 2024 as of July 11, according to a report by CNN. Out of those shootings, nine were on college campuses and 26 were in K-12 schools, data analyzed by CNN from the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown showed. In total, 17 people died and at least 39 more were injured from the school shootings, CNN said.
The number of school shootings has increased for the most part in the last decade-and-a-half. In 2008, there were 18 school shootings, according to CNN. In 2023, there were 82 school shootings.
While the number of school shootings decreased at times, like from 2010-2012 and in 2020, when many students were at home due to COVID-19, there has been an upward trend.
Meanwhile, even though 2012 only saw 13 school shootings, which is low in comparison to other years, it also saw one of the most horrific school shootings in modern history. In December of that year, a gunman shot and killed 26 people, including 20 who were children between the ages of six and seven years old at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
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Update 8/14/24, 9:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
Update 8/14/24, 11:35 a.m. ET: This article was updated with new gun violence totals from the Gun Violence Archive.
Update 8/14/24, 4:02 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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