A feminine shooting victim and the defendant were both reportedly in critical condition with gunshot wounds, a report stated
A suspect shot by police and one of those defendant's victims were in critical condition early Thursday at Southern California following a shooting at a company complex that killed four people, investigators said.
A child was among the dead in the shooting, that unfolded in Orange, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, police said.
The defendant was in custody, but has been hauled into a hospital for treatment for gunshot wounds, after reportedly exchanging shots with arriving officers, the Orange County Register reported.
A minumum of one firearm was recovered in the shooting scene, the accounts stated .
"An officer-involved shooting happened," was one of the few initial details the Orange County Police Department posted on Facebook. More details in the section was expected later Wednesday evening.
Police arrived at West Lincoln Avenue around 5:30 p.m. PT after getting a report about gunfire, Fox 11 reported. Investigators said four people turned up dead and a fifth man, a girl, was wounded. Then police confronted fire from the defendant, with a minumum of one officer firing back and striking the defendant, according to the Register.
Authorities didn't immediately know why the child was at the scene, Fox 11 reported.
The building where the shooting occurred houses several businesses, the report stated .
Officers were fired upon when they arrived, Lt. Jennifer Amat, a spokeswoman for the Orange Police Department, told the Los Angeles Times.
Amat described the incident as"a moving scenario," the Register reported. The construction proved to be a multi-tenant, two-story commercial structure with a courtyard at the middle, she told reporters.
A separate Facebook video posted with a nearby resident showed witnesses claiming to see police officers regaining weapons from a person who had been lying motionless, and revealed other officers directing two people from handcuffs, the Daily News reported.
The scene has been stabilized by p.m. PT and there was no longer a threat to the public, the Orange Police Department told Fox News. Orange is a town of approximately 140,000 residents.
Other mass shootings in the U.S. in March included Atlanta-area strikes that left eight people dead, a shooting in Boulder, Colorado, that left 10 dead, and a Maryland rampage where police said a guy killed four people and then himself.
Orange authorities said Wednesday night's shooting was the deadliest since 1997, when four state transportation workers were murdered in a work lawn by a former co-worker, the L.A. Daily News reported.
