No arrests or suspects in mass shooting at toddler’s birthday party in Stockton | California

More than a week after a mass shooting at a child’s birthday party in Stockton, California, that killed four people and injured 17 others, law enforcement still has not made any arrests or named any suspects. It may take months for investigators to determine what led to the tragedy, authorities said.

As investigators process the aftermath of the shooting, they have found at least 50 shell casings and believe at least five firearms were used in the attack, San Joaquin Sheriff Patrick Withrow told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of meat on the bone, unfortunately,” Withrow said of the information he had to share. “As you can imagine, we have a lot to process…to figure out how many actors were involved in this and how many people were actually filming.”

Withrow also acknowledged reports and rumors that the shooting was related to a gang dispute and stressed that no motive had been determined. The events leading up to the shooting remain unknown, he said, and likely won’t be determined anytime soon.

“It’s not going to be, ‘In a week or two we’ll have an answer and we’ll start arresting people,'” Withrow continued. “It’s going to take months to process all of this and find out who did this.”

As investigators review dozens of shooting cases, a litany of photographic and video evidence and more than 50 tips, city officials and victim advocates are working to keep victims, survivors and witnesses of the shooting at the forefront of the media conversation and ensure that suspicion around the cause of the shooting does not overshadow or distract from the immense pain – both physical and emotional – that this shooting has caused.

“I’ve looked at all the media reports and conversations and there are so many,” Stockton Vice Mayor Jason Lee told reporters at a news conference Tuesday where he spoke alongside a local faith leader, a violence prevention advocate and the father of 14-year-old Amari King, one of the shooting victims. “But what is singularly most important to me right now is making sure that these families get the closure that I was able to get when the person responsible for the murder of my brother and the person who shot me was brought to justice.”

“It makes me feel like I’m in a nightmare. I’m in the twilight zone,” Patrick Peterson, Amari’s father, told reporters. “Since this happened, me, my wife, my children, we haven’t been able to eat, sleep or think straight. I don’t even know what time it is. I barely know what day it is.”

“Every day my son is on my mind. I feel like that was taken away from me for nothing,” he continued.

Lee, who was shot at age 15 and lost his brother to gun violence four years later, also denounced the city’s continued underinvestment and defunding of violence prevention programs. In October, the Stockton City Council voted against a $58 million grant request that would have been used to transform a former youth outreach center into a resource center for the city’s teens and young adults. The move, along with decades of underinvestment in violence prevention programs, contributed to the city’s current violence challenges, the vice mayor said.

“We have to look at ourselves,” he said. “We gave $190 million to the police department, which is essential, but we invested $2 million in prevention services. What’s that going to do when we know the city has faced all the challenges we’re talking about today?”

Focusing on victims like Amari Peterson; Journey Rose Reotutar Guerrero and Maya Lupian, eight years old; and Susano Archuleta, 21, is especially needed because conversations in the media and on social media have largely focused on salacious details about alleged gang affiliations and conflicts that may have led to the shootings, said Tinisch Hollins, California director of Crime Survivors Speak (CSS), a national nonprofit that supports people harmed by crime.

CSS has a chapter in Stockton, whose members provide on-the-ground resources to victims and survivors of the Nov. 29 shooting.

“There is such a focus on the perceived gang that there has been criminalization of the victims to such an extent that the governor and the attorney general have not even gone to Stockton,” Hollins said.

Although Californian Gavin Newsom published an article about the shooting on X and sent his team to Stockton, he did not come to town in person. It’s a change from high-profile shootings in years past, such as those in Monterey Park in 2023 and Gilroy in 2019, that speak to a greater disparity in reactions to shootings of Black and Latino people living in underserved communities, some community members argued.

“That surprised me. [Newsom] “. showed in Monterey Park and Gilroy, so I suspect a mass shooting where the victims were 21 and under would warrant the governor’s presence,” Hollins said. “I think it’s racism, it’s 1,000 percent racial bias. These are black and brown kids, and because of the intersection between that gang involvement and them being victims of color, there’s a blatant disproportionate response.