Month: May 2023

Authorities confirmed on Monday that a man has been arrested and charged with killing four people and injuring another during a shooting spree over the holiday weekend.

Police announced in a statement that Iren Byers, a 20-year-old Arizona man, was located on Sunday afternoon and took him into custody in Mesa, Ariz.  Court documents show Byers is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder. Mesa Police Detective Brandi George said that Byers admitted to the shootings during questioning, and is cooperating while in police custody. He told them that in each of the five slayings he did not call for medical help because he believed his victims “did not deserve it;” adding that most of the victims were homeless and that Byers was “angry toward people who used drugs.”

Police first responded to a 911 call of shots fired around 3:40 p.m. Friday in downtown Phoenix, where they discovered a 41-year-old man dead at the scene. A second call came in around 10:30 p.m. in the Beverly Park neighborhood in northwest Mesa, where officers located a second 41-year-old victim who had died from gunshot wounds. While still at that scene, police located a 36-year-old woman nearby who had also been shot shortly after midnight. The woman was taken to the hospital to undergo surgery, and was listed in stable condition early Sunday.  At around 1 a.m. another call to police was made, where they found another 41-year-old man that had died from his injuries. Nearly one hour later, investigators found the final victim, a 40-year-old man also killed by gunfire, located in Mesa around 2 a.m. on Saturday.

Investigators said they identified Byers using surveillance video collected from public transit, as well as a home and businesses. Later, investigators preliminarily matched the same 9mm handgun to all five shootings using shell casings, and they later recovered the gun at Byers’ residence along with other evidence.

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After 24 hours, the search and rescue effort taking place after part of an apartment building collapsed in Davenport, Iowa will transition to its recovery phase. A section of the red brick building on the city’s Main Street came down at around 5pm on Sunday, with at least one-fourth of the structure’s units destroyed. The cause of the collapse has not been determined but some residents described the sound it created as an “explosion”. Residents living in the area reported that the building was known to have problems, including visible water damage.

As of Monday morning, a total of eight people had been rescued from the wreckage and the number of people missing remains unclear. K-9 units left the scene on Monday afternoon after authorities said there was no sign of residents trapped under the rubble. However, at least one resident of the apartment complex is unaccounted for.

In an update on Monday evening, municipal council member Kyle Gripp said that the building is not salvageable and will be torn down on Tuesday. No residents will be allowed back into the building before demolition begins due to its unstable condition. The Davenport Development and Neighborhood Services Department will oversee demolition operations.

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