Twelve people were injured, including six minors as young as 11, when gunfire erupted on Perry Street near Florida A&M University's Bragg Memorial Stadium just after the school's homecoming football game Saturday night. Eleven of the victims were shot, while a twelfth person was hurt while fleeing the scene. As of Sunday, police said no one had been arrested and there was no person of interest in the case.
Officers responded just before 8 p.m., not long after FAMU wrapped up its homecoming matchup against the Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions, according to WCTV. Perry Street sits just a few steps away from the stadium, and the outlet reported that about two dozen police officers were already in the immediate area when the shots rang out. The New York Times noted that FAMU's homecoming celebration spans a full week and draws students, faculty and alumni from across the country, meaning the area around the stadium was unusually crowded when the violence broke out.
Six of the 12 injured were adults and six were juveniles, with the youngest just 11 years old, per the station's reporting. Of those hurt, three suffered serious injuries, and accounts of the rest diverge slightly: WCTV reported one victim in critical condition and eight in stable condition, while Reuters reported nine victims in stable condition. By Sunday morning, five victims had been released from the hospital, while six remained, including the one in critical condition, the station's report said.
Chief Points to Altercation Before Shots Fired
Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said early findings indicate the shooting began with a physical altercation involving two or three people, a detail the station's report attributed directly to him. Revell said he believed one of the victims was a FAMU student and another was a grandmother, though those identifications had not been otherwise confirmed. He described the case as an active investigation and said that, as of Sunday, no arrests had been made and there was no person of interest.
FAMU is one of the nation's largest historically Black colleges and universities, a detail the Times included in its own account of the shooting. The violence came hours after the Rattlers and the Golden Lions played at Bragg Memorial Stadium, turning what should have been a celebratory homecoming weekend into another scene of gunfire near a Black college campus.
Part of a Troubling National Pattern
The Tallahassee shooting fits into a pattern that has drawn increasing national attention. CNN has identified at least 86 campus shootings tied to football or homecoming events since it began tracking school shootings in 2008, resulting in at least 30 deaths and 149 injuries, with 63 of those shootings occurring in 2021 or later. Everytown Research found that more than 80% of homecoming-week college shootings have taken place at historically Black colleges and universities, and CNN reported that of 14 incidents tied to non-football homecoming events since 2008, all but one occurred on HBCU campuses.
The scale of gun violence on American campuses more broadly has also grown. Everytown Research recorded 389 shootings at 264 colleges and universities between August 2016 and July 2026, a period during which campus shootings increased by an average of 20 percent year over year and resulted in 124 people killed and 319 wounded. The same analysis found that HBCUs experience campus shootings at 20 times the rate of non-HBCUs.
Tallahassee itself has not been immune to the surge. Tallahassee.com reported that the city saw 46 shootings in 2026 that resulted in 13 deaths and 31 injuries. Other HBCU homecomings have been hit hard in recent years too: CNN reported that at least 16 people were injured and an 18-year-old was killed during Tuskegee University's homecoming in November 2024, a shooting that came just a week after another person was shot and injured at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Police in Tallahassee have not identified a suspect, a weapon or a motive, and the investigation remains ongoing. Officials have not said when further updates on the case will be released.
