Updated October 25, 2026, 3:26 p.m. ET
Gunfire ripped through a homecoming crowd outside Florida A&M University’s football stadium on the night of Oct. 24, injuring 11 people, including six children, in one of Tallahassee’s worst mass shootings.
The youngest victim was 11 years old and one of them is a student at FAMU, police said. A twelfth person, the grandmother of one of the victims, was injured while fleeing. As of the morning of Sunday, Oct. 25, five people were released from the hospital and six remained, one of them in critical condition, according to the Tallahassee Police Department. The officials did not release their names.
“It is particularly heartbreaking to know that children are among the injured,” Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said at a news conference shortly after midnight.
No one had been arrested as of Sunday morning and police had not identified any suspects or persons of interest. Investigators believe the shooting was the result of a physical fight between two or three people, Revell said, but police have not said what sparked it.
The gunfire erupted just before 8 p.m. ET near Perry and Manatee streets, behind Bragg Memorial Stadium. About two hours earlier, more than 20,000 fans had filled the stadium to watch the Rattlers lose to Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 31-28, and the surrounding streets were still crowded with students, alumni and families.
Homecoming is one of the biggest weekends of the year at FAMU, a historically black university of nearly 10,000 students, and a week of events has brought alumni and their families back to campus. The entire capital city was busy that night, with Florida State University hosting Georgia Tech earlier in the day and Halloween parties underway across the city, the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
Within seconds, Perry Street became a crush of people running in all directions, some thrown to the ground and trampled, others crouching wherever they could find shelter. Jayden Dubois, a FAMU student, told WCTV he heard gunshots and was trampled in the rush. When he got up, Dubois said, someone was lying on the ground next to him.
Police officers ran toward the shooting without knowing where the shooters were or how many people had been hit, Revell said. The crowds were so dense that ambulances and patrol cars could not reach the injured.
“We had officers picking up victims and carrying them in their arms because they couldn’t get through the mass of people,” he said.
Police declared the scene secure around 9:45 p.m. ET. At that time, FAMU warned people to stay away from the stadium and Perry Street or to shelter in place if they were nearby. The university later said its campus was safe.
Detectives, sergeants and forensic teams were still canvassing the scene in the early hours of Oct. 25 as the department’s violent crimes unit took over the investigation. Police have not offered a motive, but Revell said investigators are determined to find those responsible and get answers for the families.
Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey called the shooting “a truly horrific and heartbreaking tragedy” on social media.
“Tonight and in the days to come, the FAMU family is not alone,” he wrote. “Our entire community stands with you.”
Tallahassee, a city of about 200,000, has seen several high-profile shootings in recent years. In April 2025, a gunman killed two people and injured six others at the Florida State University student union, about two miles from the Oct. 24 shooting. In 2022, one person was killed and eight were injured when gunfire broke out among the crowd outside a liquor store near the FSU campus after a football game.
Shootings have also overshadowed homecoming celebrations at several other historically black colleges in recent years. In 2024, gunfire broke out during Homecoming weekend at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and a week later, one person was killed and four others were injured during Homecoming weekend at Albany State University in Georgia.
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