Nightclub shooting latest for city seeing rise in violence
FORT MYERS, Fla. — A couple of doors down from Club Blu, where a young man and a 14-year-old boy were killed while attending a teen party, shop owner Idis Edouard hoisted a rod above his head to gently move a girl’s blue dress aside.
“The bullet was there,” he said, pointing to a spot on the ceiling. “And there. It shattered that window.”
The pockmarks were from another mass shooting, not connected to the club, a couple of years ago. Both shootings remind Edouard, a Haitian immigrant, that the city he has called home for several decades may be increasingly unsafe. In the past year, there have been at least six shootings in the area, a place known more for its stunning Gulf beaches than for gun violence.
On Sunday, Club Blu hosted a swimsuit-themed party in hopes of providing a safe place for kids in an alcohol-free venue with security. As the club was closing around 12:30 a.m. Monday and parents were arriving to pick up their children, gunfire erupted. Two were slain and 17 others, ranging in age from 12 to 27, were wounded.