1 killed, 7 wounded in shooting at off-campus party near Fort Valley State University

A shooting early Saturday morning has left one person dead and seven others wounded in Fort Valley, Georgia, the state Bureau of Investigation said Saturday. The incident happened at an off-campus party near Fort Valley State University, officials said. 

"Our thoughts are with the students and their families as they recover," the university said in a statement Saturday. 

The person killed in the shooting was not a Fort Valley State University student, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said early Saturday. But the school said students were among those wounded. The seven victims are all in stable condition, according to the bureau. 

Suspects have not been identified and the bureau is asking for assistance with anonymous tips to locate who was responsible for the shooting. 

The university temporarily underwent a lockdown on campus "as a precautionary measure."

The historically Black university's homecoming parade scheduled for Saturday has been canceled but its upcoming homecoming game set to take place later in the day will proceed with "increased security protocols," the school said. 

According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit database that tracks national gun violence, there have been 578 mass shootings in 2021 to date. The nonprofit group classifies mass shootings as an incident where four or more people have been shot and/or killed in a single event without including the shooter. 

Saturday morning's shooting in Fort Lee comes during a year on track to be America's deadliest for gun violence in the last two decades. A study conducted by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice analyzed 24 major cities and found that homicides increased by 24% in the first quarter of 2021 when compared to the same time period in 2020, and by 49% from that period in 2019. 

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• Georgia