In 60 seconds: Twelve people — six of them minors — were hurt in a shooting near Florida A&M University's Bragg Memorial Stadium on Saturday night, hours after the school's homecoming game. Eleven suffered gunshot wounds. No one is in custody yet.
- 12 people were hurt near Bragg Memorial Stadium in Tallahassee just before 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24 — 11 with gunshot wounds, one hurt while fleeing.
- Six of the victims are juveniles. The youngest is 11 years old. One victim is a FAMU student.
- As of Sunday morning, one victim remained in critical condition, six were still in the hospital, and five had been released.
- Police believe one shooter was involved and say an altercation between two or three people came first. No arrests have been made.
- Anyone with information is asked to call Tallahassee police at 850-891-4200 or Crime Solvers at 850-574-TIPS.
Homecoming weekend at Florida A&M is supposed to end with packed stands, old friends, and a long walk home in a good mood. On Saturday night, it ended with gunfire on Perry Street instead.
Bragg Memorial Stadium, home of the Florida A&M Rattlers. Photo: Mjrmtg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
What happened
Officers responded just before 8 p.m. on Saturday to a shooting on two streets near Bragg Memorial Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida — Perry Street and Manatee Street, right by the stadium. Hours earlier, FAMU's Rattlers had hosted the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Golden Lions for the school's annual homecoming game.
The crowd was still thick when the shots rang out. Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said about two dozen officers were already in the immediate area, and some of them carried victims in their arms to transport because they couldn't get through the mass of people. It's the kind of detail that tells you how chaotic those first minutes were.
Florida A&M put out a statement on X asking the campus community to avoid the area, and saying the campus itself remained safe. "Our hearts are with the victims and everyone affected by tonight's incident on Perry Street," the university said. Florida State University, about a mile away, issued its own emergency alert and said there was no indication that members of its campus community were involved.
Latest verified facts
Here's what police have confirmed so far — and it's worth separating this from the rumors that always swirl after a shooting like this:
The victims: Twelve people were hurt. Eleven suffered gunshot wounds. The twelfth is the grandmother of one of the victims, who was hurt while fleeing the scene. Six victims are adults and six are juveniles. The youngest is just 11 years old, and one victim is believed to be a FAMU student.
Their conditions: At Chief Revell's late-night news conference, one victim was in critical condition, three were in serious condition, and eight were in stable condition. In a Sunday morning update, the Tallahassee Police Department said one victim remained in critical condition, six remained in the hospital, and five had been released.
What led up to it: Preliminary findings point to an altercation between individuals before the shooting. Revell described it as "an isolated incident between two or three individuals and nothing more than that," and said investigators believe one shooter was involved.
What police don't have yet: No one has been arrested, and no one was in custody as of Sunday morning. In a Sunday noon update, police added that there have been no deaths, that investigators do not have a person of interest, and that detectives reviewed digital evidence overnight and kept canvassing the Perry Street area. Police have not named a suspect or a motive, and Revell was blunt about what comes next: "Our priority is to determine what happened and why it happened, and to bring the people that are responsible for this to justice." Police also opened a dedicated tip hotline at 850-891-4610 and an online evidence portal for photos and video.
Inside Bragg Memorial Stadium, where FAMU had hosted its homecoming game hours earlier. Photo: Mjrmtg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Why it matters
Honestly, the numbers here are what stop you cold. Six kids. An 11-year-old. A grandmother hurt running from gunfire. This wasn't a fight between strangers in an empty parking lot — it happened in a crowd, at one of the biggest weekends of the year for one of the nation's largest historically Black universities, with families and alumni everywhere.
Homecoming at FAMU isn't just a football game. It's a weeklong celebration that pulls in students, faculty, alumni, and their families from all over the country. When violence lands in the middle of that, it doesn't just hurt the people who were shot — it shakes the whole community's sense of safety at an event that's supposed to feel like a reunion.
And there's a harder question underneath it. Revell said officers were already all over the area — roughly two dozen of them — and it still happened. That's not a criticism of those officers, who by every account ran toward the chaos. It's a measure of how fast a single altercation can turn into a mass-casualty scene when a gun is involved.
Impact on the USA and the world
For Americans, this is another entry in a grimly familiar pattern: a celebration weekend — a homecoming, a festival, a block party — interrupted by gunfire, with children among the victims. Each one reignites the same national argument about guns, crowds, and public safety, and each one fades from the headlines before the victims are even out of the hospital.
But the local impact is the one that will linger longest. Tallahassee is a college town where FAMU and Florida State sit about a mile apart, and homecoming weekend is an economic and cultural high point. How the city and the university handle the next few days — what they say, what security changes they make, whether anyone is actually arrested — will shape whether families feel safe coming back next year.
There's also a practical lesson here for anyone who attends big public events: police are asking witnesses to come forward, and in cases like this, bystander video and tips are often what break the case open. If you were there and saw something, the tip lines are below.
What happens next
Our take: the next 48 hours matter more than the headlines. Right now police have a scene, a set of victims, and a preliminary story about an altercation — but no suspect in custody and no publicly named motive. The investigation's credibility will hinge on whether that changes fast, because "isolated incident between two or three individuals" is the kind of early framing that either gets confirmed by an arrest or starts to look shaky if days pass with nothing.
Watch for three things. First, an arrest announcement — or, just as telling, silence from police beyond the Sunday update. Second, updated conditions for the victim still in critical condition. Third, what FAMU itself says about homecoming security going forward, because the university's next statement will signal whether it treats this as a one-off or a wake-up call.
We'll update this story as Tallahassee police release more confirmed information. If you were near Perry Street on Saturday night and saw anything, call Tallahassee police at 850-891-4200 or Crime Solvers at 850-574-TIPS.
Sources: Tallahassee Police Department statements; Tallahassee Democrat; Associated Press; The New York Times; Florida A&M University statement on X; Florida State University emergency alert.