Dayton holiday parade halted amid gunfire; no injuries reported

The annual parade had just started when people heard gunfire in the area of Courthouse Square and started running down Main Street toward Fourth Street, according to Dayton Daily News employees at the scene.

Dayton officials at a press conference Friday night asked for help identifying those involved and gathering more details for their investigation. No one had been taken into custody as of then, police said.

The shot was reported in the area near Second and Main streets at 8:11 p.m.

A sergeant on duty stationed close to the shot fired heard the shot, and saw juveniles fighting.

A video posted on social media by a Dayton woman shows two juvenile females fighting and a group of people trying to break it up when a gun is pointed in the air and fired once.

Assistant Chief Eric Henderson said initial information police received was at least two juvenile females were fighting, and a juvenile male pulled out a weapon, firing into the air.

More than 30 officers were stationed downtown for the special event, Henderson said.

“I was just taught to hide underneath my desk.”

Ben and Lauren Kolber were standing on the street corner near the Schuster Center talking to some friends when they saw “a wall of people” running toward them.

The Kolbers didn’t hear the shot, but heard people yelling that there was a shooter.

“My first thought was that they were running towards Santa, because we thought that Santa was traveling in the parade,” Ben said. “But my wife is smarter, and she thought that maybe they were running because there’s something to run from.”

The crowd didn’t turn into a stampede where they were, but all the adults in the area seemed to be cognizant of the number of children, the Kolbers said, and the crowd cleared out quickly.

“Past the courthouse, they said that they had recovered a casing, and made an announcement they were putting the parade on pause, but at that time the place was cleared out,” Lauren said.

The Kolbers live in Dallas, Texas, but were home for Thanksgiving in Dayton visiting family. At this point in the evening, they had become separated, but instead helped a friend move her children away from the scene.

Some children they saw were crying. Others were calm.

“One of the kids with us who said, I wasn’t I wasn’t taught how to handle this. I was just taught to hide under my desk,” Lauren said.

Officials notified security at the nearby Schuster Center, where a performance was happening, and instructed the audience to remain in place as officers initially investigated.

‘We just wanted to get them out of there’

Julia Wallace was at the parade with her family, including her three kids, two nieces and three nephews, six of whom were small children.

“We just went into grabbing all six of the kids who were there, six little ones, picking them up and handing them to an aunt, an uncle or a sibling, and getting them paired up with a responsible adult and getting them out of there,” she said. “We were lucky because we had an overabundance of adults with us tonight.”

Wallace said she wasn’t entirely sure what the sound was, and hoped that everyone moving away from the sound was overreacting. However, she was taking no chances with her family.

“In this day and age, you never know what this is. But it wasn’t something we were going to take a chance with. We had six little children with us and we just wanted to get them out of there no matter what it was,” she said.

The majority of attendees were children. Chairs and baby strollers were abandoned at Courthouse Square as people ran down Main Street, witnesses said.

An announcement said the parade initially was pausing.

Later, an announcer said Dayton police had asked for spectators to clear the area as officers investigated multiple incidents.

Dayton’s mayor and city commissioners were in attendance at the holiday event.

‘One of the larger crowds I have seen’

“We are very disappointed that we weren’t able to complete the parade, but we do commend the police,” said Sandra K. Gudorf, president of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, which organizes the event each year.

This was the 50th anniversary of the event, and Gudorf said Friday night’s crowd was one of largest in recent years.

”One of the larger crowds I have seen in a long, long time” Gudorf said.

One shell casing was recovered at the scene and is being processed by police. Officers said the gun was a handgun, but would not comment more on the potential firearm.

Inducing panic as a potential charge could be associated with this event because of the crowd.

”There were several people around that likely know the individual, so please call,” to give information on what happened, Henderson said.

Mims said he’s disappointed in the gun violence that has happened in the community and across the country in recent weeks.

”We have continuously tried fight to keep our citizens safe, and there is gun legislation continuously across the nation and here in the state of Ohio that makes it easier for an individual to carry weapons. And it’s disappointing that that continues to be the trend,” Mims said.

Parade a family tradition

Wallace, 45, said she had been going to the parade every year, and marched in the parade herself in high school. However, she didn’t know if she would ever take her kids to the yearly tradition ever again.

“We’ve been doing this since our youngest was a baby. She’s 11. It’s our absolute every year tradition. We’ve never missed it. But after tonight, I don’t know if we’ll ever do it again. And I don’t know that my kids will ever feel safe doing it because they’re old enough to know what was happening.”