Police said that shots broke out at about midnight at an "impromptu block party" that followed Juneteenth celebrations in the city of Charlotte, DW reported.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Johnny Jennings told reporters that police were called to help an injured pedestrian and found hundreds of people in the streets. He said that after emergency services arrived, several shots were fired.
The crowd scattered, and at least additional five people were hit by vehicles while escaping.
Juneteenth, a portmanteau of June and 19th, commemorates the US abolition of slavery under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, belatedly announced by a Union army in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, after the Civil War ended.
Thousands marched through US cities this week in Juneteenth observances, an occasion freighted with special resonance this year amid America’s reckoning with its legacy of racism.
MN/PR