Five shot in Akron’s Mason school parking lot as more than 100 young people gather overnight

Five people, including at least three juveniles, were shot and 10 additional people were hit by fleeing cars early Monday morning as more than 100 people gathered outside of Mason Community Learning Center. 

“It sounded like fireworks — crack, crack, crack, crack,” said the Rev. Roger Harper, 86, who lives around the corner from the school and was on his porch when the shooting started early Monday morning. “It was so fast. I thought, nobody could be shooting all that.” 

Another resident who lives near the Middlebury neighborhood school said they were awakened by the gunfire and estimated hearing more than 100 shots. 

More than 30 911 calls, reviewed by Signal Akron, began flooding into the Summit Emergency Communications Center dispatchers at 3:05 a.m. on Monday. 

With screaming and blaring car horns in the background, the first caller from the scene was a young woman who said she saw someone who was shot; she was screaming for her group to get to a car. The next caller seconds later frantically reported a “shootout” and repeatedly yelled at a person she knew to get off the ground and flee. Moments later, another attendee pleaded with police to get there and said his cousin was shot.

At the scene later on Monday, Akron Police Department spokesperson Lt. Michael Murphy said that three minors and a 20-year-old were shot and more than nine other people were hit by cars driving away after the shooting erupted. (A press release from Akron Public Schools said “more than a dozen” were injured by cars.) Nobody was killed, Murphy said. 

Murphy said that the people injured at Mason CLC were taken by private individuals to various local hospitals in and around Akron, similar to the still-unsolved June 2024 incident when nearly 30 people were shot during a block party.

An employee of an Akron hospital called 911 about 10 minutes after the shooting started to report that “a car load” of people including “at least one of the gunshot victims” started arriving. Minutes later, a hospital employee called back to urge Akron police to send more officers to the hospital because “we’ve got maybe 20 kids” who are “acting up in the waiting room.”

A minute later, an employee of another Akron hospital reported that a gunshot victim and others began arriving there and that the hospital was on lockdown. Four hours later, just after 7 a.m., a nurse from a hospital in another county called Akron police.

“I have this patient here, she was dropped off by a friend — she said that she was at somewhere called Mason Elementary in Akron,” the nurse said. “ …. She said that she was out there with some friends, that they were partying and that someone pulled up, they started shooting. She was dropped off here with injuries all over. She said in the mix of everything, she went to run and she was ran over by a vehicle.”

The APD spokesperson said that, earlier in the evening, about an hour and a half before the incident at Mason, there was a “takeover” of a Waffle House on South Arlington Street in Springfield Township by a large group of teenagers. It was broken up by police there. 

He said police believe that group, plus another group of teenagers that may have initially gathered in Stow, had multiple police jurisdictions “chasing [them] around the entire night.” The groups all ended up in the Mason CLC parking lot.

Police believe the incident was confined to the parking lot area of the school, where they recovered more than 100 shell casings from multiple shooters. Detectives were canvassing the neighborhood early Monday morning to gather additional information and to see if they had missed any evidence in the dark, such as additional shell casings. 

Murphy said having teenagers roaming around in the middle of the night is concerning. 

“As parents, we need to start to have some serious conversations with our young people about decision making, large crowds, and being out past curfew. It’s really just a recipe for disaster. Really, only bad things happen at that time of night.”

“We’re extremely thankful that this wasn’t worse than it is.” 

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Akron Mayor Shammas Malik decried the incident.

“Let me be clear, this behavior is completely unacceptable. As a city, we are working daily to tackle violence like this and to put a stop to gatherings of this nature,” Malik said. “Teenagers have no business being out partying at 3am. We need parents and our community to work with us to ensure that children are home when they need to be. Thankfully, no one was killed in last night’s incident but there are too many times when lives have been lost due to senseless violence. My message to our teenagers is that no party is worth your life. You have so much to look forward to. Don’t let one bad decision take away your future or someone else’s. Our city government will continue to work to uplift our youth and help keep them safe.”