CLEVELAND — A $50,000 reward is up for grabs for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the mass shooting in downtown Cleveland early Sunday morning.
The reward money is being put up by Bobby George, who owns Ethos Capital Partners and multiple restaurants in the Greater Cleveland area, including one on West 6th Street near where the shooting took place.
George told 3News that he wanted to be the person to take action. "Money talks. You show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome."
George also telling 3News that for him, this isn't about the business, it's about the community, victims, and their families.
“We’ve got an issue, and we’ve got to support our cops, and then we also have to support our communities and our education system and get to the root cause of the problem," he said. "Why are people feeling so hopeless that they have to go to crime?”
The president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland, Michael Deemer, says in his 12 years with the organization, he's hasn't seen anything like this happen. Deemer says their top priority is to make sure downtown Cleveland is safe, clean, and welcoming.
“It’s something that you see happen in other cities. It breaks your heart when you see it happen, you hope it doesn’t happen in your city and you try to do everything that you can to make sure that it doesn’t," Deemer told 3News. "And when it does, I will say, you want to see the response that we had from law enforcement and from first responders, to make sure that things were responded to very quickly."
Deemer says Downtown Cleveland works closely to coordinate with law enforcement agencies and employ their own safety specialists -- unarmed, uniformed safety personnel who patrol downtown from 7 a.m. to midnight daily, and even later on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
"We're working day in and day out with the Cleveland Police Department to make sure that we've got a visible safety presence out at all hours of the day, that we've got social service providers connecting people in need in the streets with assistance, that we're maintaining lighting and public infrastructure, and we're creating a pedestrian experience that feels safe and is inviting," Deemer said.
Susie Sharp, who works on West 6th Street, said she arrived to her office Monday morning to find a worker washing the sidewalk in front of Barley House, around the area where police say the shooting took place. Unfortunately, Sharp said when she heard the news of the violence, she wasn't phased.
"I didn't have much of a reaction, because I'm so used to seeing this stuff, isn't that a shame?" Sharp said.
A total of nine people were hurt in the shooting incident that took place just prior to 2:30 a.m. at West 6th Street and Johnson Court. Police say everybody involved was taken to MetroHealth Medical Center with non-fatal injuries.
The nine victims are described as follows:
- 23-year-old man; shot in forearm
- 29-year-old man; shot in leg
- 26-year-old man; shot in wrist and lower body
- 24-year-old woman; shot in both feet
- 38-year-old man; shot in leg
- 23-year-old woman; shot in knee
- 27-year-old man; shot in both legs
- 26-year-old man; shot in leg
- 24-year-old man; shot in knee
According to MetroHealth, as of Monday, two victims were treated and released. Five of the victims are in the hospital's emergency department, while two have undergone surgery.
