Deadly mass shooting at video game tournament in Florida

A gunman opened fire at an online video game tournament in the US state of Florida, killing two people before fatally shooting himself as a livestream of the event captured gunfire and screams.

The shooting took place on Sunday during the Madden 19 online game tournament, held in the GLHF Game Bar, in the city of Jacksonville.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said at a news conference after the rampage that nine people had been wounded by gunfire and two others hurt in the chaos as people fled.

He said authorities believe David Katz, 24, one of the gamers at the tournament, carried out the attack with at least one handgun at Jacksonville Landing, a complex of eateries and shops on the St Johns River.

Marquis Williams and Taylor Poindexter, a Chicago couple at the scene, spoke to reporters about the armed attacker.

“We didn’t see a face,” Poindexter, 26, told reporters a few hours after the attack, standing on crutches after spraining her ankle trying to escape.

“We did see him with two hands on a gun, walking back just popping rounds.”

The video game tournament was being streamed online from the restaurant.

An FBI spokesman, Dave Fitz, confirmed that agents had gone to the home of the suspect’s father, an upscale townhouse in Baltimore, Maryland. 

The attack occurred amid a debate about US gun laws that was given fresh impetus by the massacre of 17 people at a high school in February in Parkland, Florida. 

Survivors of the Parkland shooting expressed sorrow on Sunday at the news of another mass shooting in the state.

“Once again, my heart hurts and all of me is so angry. We cannot accept this as our reality,” Delaney Tarr, one of the organisers of the student-led March for Our Lives movement, tweeted.

Two years ago, a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Multiple fatalities at the scene, many transported. #TheLandingMassShooting https://t.co/qBJvkaO7xT

— Jax Sheriff's Office (@JSOPIO) August 26, 2018