The young people arrived in a slow and steady stream but left in a raging river of chaos and gunfire just after 3:05 a.m. on Monday.
Surveillance cameras at Mason Community Learning Center in Akron’s Middlebury neighborhood were recording as an impromptu late-night social gathering turned into a scene of a mass shooting that hospitalized at least five young people with gunshot wounds and more than a dozen others who were injured by cars trying to flee the scene.
The footage, captured by nine Akron Public Schools’ cameras and reviewed by Signal Akron, provides some insight into the event that has instigated stronger calls from the city and community members to address gun violence in Akron.
Akron Police Department spokesperson Lt. Michael Murphy previously told Signal Akron that at least some of the estimated 100 people who had been at Mason CLC were involved in a “takeover” at the Waffle House restaurant on South Arlington Street in Springfield Township that was broken up by police about an hour and a half before the shooting began at Mason CLC.
The surveillance footage appears to show that a group of cars turned off of East Exchange Street and into the school’s empty parking lot at 1:30 a.m. — a passenger in one of the first cars captured on the video appears to be hanging out of the window.
The footage indicates that the gathering continued to grow over the next 90 minutes as more and more people arrived in cars and on foot, typically in small groups, and headed toward the area around the basketball and tennis courts on the southeast corner of the school property. Some people can be seen sitting and talking on the benches near the parking lot, appearing relaxed as cars continue to roll in.
Between 2:59 a.m. and 3:03 a.m., video shows a large influx of cars pouring into the parking lot one after the other. Less than two minutes later, gunfire erupts.
At 3:05 a.m., a surveillance camera focusing on the area in front of the school’s front doors along East Exchange Street shows a stampede of panicked young people sprinting away from the gunfire. People trip and fall. Some hide. At least one person drops to the ground as if they had been shot, lying motionless for moments before eventually crawling out of frame.
Amid the chaos, after the initial gunshots, a person in the crowd can be seen turning around and wildly firing a handgun multiple times back toward where the large group had been gathered.
Moments after the initial surge of people fleeing the scene on foot are out of frame, another round of people panicking ensues in front of the school — they can be seen getting in cars and speeding away.
Four minutes after the shooting begins, a group of people can be seen carrying someone from the side of the school and into the back seat of an awaiting car that drives off. Another group transports another person to a car that also drives away.
The first Akron police car visible on the footage reviewed by Signal Akron arrives at the school at 3:12 a.m., seven minutes after the shooting began and 911 calls began flooding in. Backup soon arrived and officers with high-powered flashlights can be seen canvassing the scene.
No young people can be seen on the video by 3:13 a.m. — 911 calls from Akron-area hospitals indicated that victims were driven there in private cars.
The APD and Akron public schools indicated that five people were shot and more than a dozen were hit by fleeing cars, with no reported fatalities.