3
0
SAN MARCOS, Calif. (CNS) -- Authorities sought Tuesday to determine who unleashed a fusillade of gunfire near a San Marcos park as evening youth baseball games were underway there, sending a round whizzing harmlessly onto one of the occupied diamonds.
Several 911 callers reported hearing gunshots in the area of Mission Sports Park on Bailey Court at about 7:45 p.m. Monday, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.
In video footage captured by a surveillance camera behind home plate at one of the baseball fields at the park and posted online by San Diego County Crime Stoppers, seven distant-sounding shots can be heard as a boy with a bat stands in the batter's box awaiting a pitch. Just after the final shot goes off, a puff of dirt shoots up on the base path between first and second base, and the players and adults on the field all flee amid urgent shouting.
Deputies, including the crew of a sheriff's patrol helicopter, searched the area, finding a bullet on the field, Lt. Gavin Lanning said. The personnel located no victims or suspects, he said.
Administrators at nearby Palomar College put the campus on lockdown as a precaution during the search. The security measures were lifted at about 9:30 p.m., Lanning said,
No suspects or witnesses to the origin of the shooting had been located as of Tuesday afternoon, the lieutenant said.
About 200 people were in the park when the shots were fired, according to Lanning.