Brothers Smiley Martin and Dandrae Martin were arrested in connection with the Sacramento mass shooting. On April 3, 2022, a mass shooting occurred in downtown Sacramento, California leaving six people dead and 12 others injured.
Update: 04/05/2022 4:48 PM
The Sacramento Police Department said Tuesday that Daviyonne Dawson, 31, was taken into custody Monody night on charges of being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. He is not charged with crimes directly related to the shootings.
Original posting: 04/05/2022 1:20 PM
Early on the morning of April 3 reported suspects Smiley Martin and his younger brother Dandrae Martin opened fire on the 1000 block of K Street killing six people and injuring 12 others.
The victims include Johntaya Alexander, 21; Melinda Davis, 57; Yamile Martinez-Andrade, 21; Sergio Harris, 38; Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32; and Devazia Turner, 29, according to the Sacramento County coroner.
Police who were patrolling the area heard gunshots fired around 2 am and encountered a large crowd. A fight that broke out in a nightclub shortly before the shooting spilled out into the street.
The first suspect arrested was Dandrae Martin, 26. He was booked for assault and illegal firearm possession.
On Tuesday, Smile Martin, 27, was arrested while recovering from gunshot wounds in the hospital where he posed as one of the 12 victims who were injured.
He had been among those “located at the scene with serious injuries from gunfire and was transported to an area hospital for treatment,” police said.
Smiley Martin was arrested on charges of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a machine gun, the Sacramento Police Department announced in a statement early Tuesday.
“Smiley Martin was quickly identified as a person of interest and has remained under the supervision of an officer at the hospital while his treatment continues,” the force said in a statement.
According to MSN:
With six people killed, this incident marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern Sacramento history, a review of Sacramento Bee archives confirms. A mass shooting is generally defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter.
1991 deadly hostage crisis
Another shooting that matches the number killed includes the deaths of three hostages and three captors. In total, six people died in the 1991 hostage crisis at a Good Guys electronic store. Ten others were wounded.
Search warrants have been executed at three residences as they try to find a motive for the shooting. Investigators recovered more than 100 spent shell casings at the scene, along with a stolen handgun police said had been “converted to a weapon capable of automatic gunfire.”
It didn’t take long for former vice president Joe Biden to come out against guns once again.
“Today, America once again mourns for another community devastated by gun violence,” Mr. Biden said in a statement Sunday night.
“We know these lives were not the only lives impacted by gun violence last night. And we equally mourn for those victims and families who do not make national headlines,” he said. “But we must do more than mourn; we must act.”
However, California has some of the strictest gun control laws and the brothers were not legally allowed to own or possess a firearm.
Court records in California and Arizona shed more light on Dandrae Martin’s criminal history, CBS Sacramento reported.
In 2014, he pleaded guilty to domestic violence in Riverside County, California, and served 30 days in jail and community service. In Arizona in 2016, he was charged with felony aggravated assault and domestic violence and sentenced to two-and-a-half years.
In 2018, he was charged again with domestic violence, misdemeanor criminal damage, and a felony marijuana violation. In 2019, he was found guilty of violating his probation.
“What I do know about tragedy is that most of the time it’s avoidable. And unfortunately, in this instance we have six people killed, and another 12 people injured, and it just didn’t have to happen. And I hope we can learn from it and make the changes we need in our criminal justice system, so it doesn’t happen again,” said Mayor Dyer.
Mayor Dyer says lawmakers need to make changes to California’s criminal justice system after this weekend’s mass shooting in Sacramento.
He says that with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, the issue lies with how crime is prosecuted.
“There seems to be a disregard for human life. People’s willingness to pull out a firearm and shoot it indiscriminately at times and to know that unintended people get injured and killed,” said Mayor Dyer.
… “I know that California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and those simply have not worked. We have to do something else, and we have to do something real. Violent crime has gone up in the past few years because there’s fewer consequences,” said Balderrama.
California has 107 different gun-control laws on the books, more than any other state, according to a database maintained by the Boston University School of Public Health. Massachusetts is No. 2 at 103.
Still, lawmakers say Sunday’s bloodbath near the Capitol shows there’s more work to do in a state where an estimated 7 million people live in a home where guns are present. “What a sickening, senseless loss of life,” said California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on Twitter. “It’s an epidemic, and we need #GunReform now to stop it.”
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, speaking a block from the scene, said, “Thoughts and prayers are not nearly enough …. This senseless epidemic of gun violence must be addressed.” He called for tougher laws on assault weapons, even though it wasn’t immediately clear what type of gun was used Sunday.
So what are more gun control laws going to do? Nothing except punish law-abiding citizens. Criminals like Smiley Martin and Dandrae Martin don’t obey the laws. How will more laws fix the issue with criminals?
