Fight Outside FAMU's Homecoming Game Turns to Gunfire: 12 Hurt, Half of Them Kids, and No Arrest Yet

A homecoming Saturday at Florida A&M University, the historically Black public university in Tallahassee, ended with children bleeding in the street. Just before 8 p.m., gunfire broke out at the corner of Perry and Manatee streets, right next to the school's Bragg Memorial Stadium, and 12 people were hurt. Eleven of them were shot.

Half the victims are kids. Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said at a press conference just after midnight that six are adults and six are juveniles, and "our youngest victim is 11 years old." Three have serious injuries and one is in critical condition. Eight are stable. The twelfth victim, the chief said, is "a grandmother of one of the victims" who "injured herself fleeing from the scene." One of the wounded is a FAMU student.

"I stand before you tonight devastated," Revell said, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, which broke the story overnight.

What police know

Police say it started with a fight. "Our preliminary information shows that an altercation occurred between individuals," Revell said, calling it "an isolated incident between two or three individuals." Police believe one shooter fired, NBC News reported.

As of Sunday morning, nobody was under arrest, and Revell said police had no person of interest, WCTV reported. The department's Violent Crimes Unit is running the case. "Our priority is to determine what happened and why it happened, and to bring the people that are responsible for this to justice," the chief said, asking witnesses to come forward at 850-891-4200 or anonymously through Crime Solvers at 850-574-TIPS.

The timing made it worse. A crowd of 20,549 had packed Bragg for the afternoon game, which ended just before 7 p.m. with Arkansas-Pine Bluff spoiling homecoming, 31-28, according to the UAPB box score. It was FAMU's first homecoming loss since 2017. An hour later, the streets around the stadium were still full of people when the shots rang out.

Cops who ran toward it

Revell said about two dozen of his officers were already in the area, and the whole department was on the clock for the busy weekend. When the shooting started, they did not wait for the scene to be cleared.

"We had officers who were picking up victims and carrying them in their arms to transport because they couldn't get through the mass of people," the chief said, choking up. "Without hesitation they ran into the middle of this, still not knowing where the shooters were, still not knowing how many victims they had."

In a written statement reported by Fox News, the department said officers "put their own safety at risk to carry victims to safety and transport them to the hospital," adding, "Their actions were nothing short of heroic."

How the night unfolded

FAMU sent its first warning at about 8:40 p.m., telling people near Bragg and Perry Street to avoid the area or shelter in place. Florida State University, about a mile away, told students, faculty and staff across Tallahassee to "remain indoors this evening and stay alert," while saying there was no sign anyone from FSU was involved. Late Saturday, FAMU said its campus was safe and asked anyone with information to call police.

Not the first homecoming to end this way

Homecoming weekends at historically Black colleges have drawn gunfire before. In November 2024, a shooting during Tuskegee University's homecoming in Alabama killed an 18-year-old and injured 16 others, 12 of them by gunfire, AP reported. Police there arrested a man leaving the scene with a handgun fitted with a machine gun conversion device. In October 2023, five people were shot during homecoming week at Baltimore's Morgan State University when a dispute between two groups turned into gunfire, according to AP.

The pattern is the same each time: thousands of families and alumni come to celebrate, and a handful of people bring a grudge and a gun. In Tallahassee, whoever opened fire on a street full of families is still out there.