Four dead, at least 20 injured in South Carolina island shooting

Four people were killed and at least 20 injured in a shooting at a restaurant in a South Carolina island town on Sunday, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies were called to Willie’s Bar and Grill on St. Helena Island just before 1 a.m. and found several people suffering from gunshot wounds, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Of those injured, four are in critical condition, authorities said.

The sheriff’s office said it was investigating the incident but declined to provide further details.

The office declined to release the names of those killed pending notification of family members.

Hundreds of people were there at the time of the shooting, the sheriff’s office said.

“This is a tragic and difficult incident for everyone,” the sheriff’s office said.

St. Helena Island is known as an epicenter of a culture of people descended from African slaves known as Gullah Geechee.

The bar and grill where the shooting occurred describes itself as serving authentic Gullah cuisine.

Mass shootings, which the Gun Violence Archive defines as incidents where four or more people are shot, have become more common in the U.S. in the past decade.

Americans are largely divided along political lines regarding possible policy solutions, with Democrats favoring more gun restrictions and Republicans backing gun rights and better enforcement of laws against violent crime.

Earlier, a 60-year-old man was in custody in Australia Monday after police said he shot up to 50 bullets into a busy Sydney street, wounding more than a dozen people.

A large contingent of police swarmed the area and locked down the street, before entering the property above a business and arresting the man. They seized a rifle from the scene.

Police had initially said up to a hundred bullets were fired and 20 people were wounded.

Later, New South Wales Police Acting Superintendent Stephen Parry revised the number of shots to around 50 and the toll of wounded to 16.

The accused shooter was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries to the area around his eyes sustained during his arrest.

No charges have been laid against the alleged gunman yet. A police investigation is ongoing.

New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon  described the shooting as “serious and terrifying”.

The gunman’s motive was unclear but there were “no known links to terrorism activity or any gang activity”, he told local radio station 2GB.

Read More: Over a dozen wounded in rare Sydney mass shooting

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Australia.

A ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons has been in place since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.