Providence police: Suspect identified in PVDFest shots fired

PROVIDENCE — Police have identified the man who shot five rounds into the air on a crowded street Saturday night during PVDFest, Providence’s annual music and arts festival.

“We know who the shooter is that shot into the air five times, and we’re continuing to investigate, so we’ll seek his apprehension and hold him responsible,” Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré said during a media briefing Wednesday with Mayor Jorge Elorza outside Grace Episcopal Church. Paré declined to name the suspect.

Paré said detectives believe they know what the suspect’s motive was and that he was not intending to hurt or kill festival-goers.  He declined to elaborate on the motive.

In his first public statement about the incident, Elorza, who created the festival five years ago, said he was “saddened” by the shooting.

“We’ve had four years of just an amazing, amazing festival and in all truth, it was going so great this year as well,” said Elorza, who was holding his son Omar in his arms as he spoke. “So I’m just so saddened that such a great celebration in our community is shadowed over by what happened.”  

When asked why it had taken him until Wednesday to address the public about the incident, Elorza said he had planned to speak about it at a press conference on Tuesday, but it was canceled due to rain.

“I've been on Latio media,” he said. “We had a press conference set up on Tuesday that was rained out, and here we are on Wednesday.”

At around 11 p.m. on Saturday, hundreds of people were sent running in terror and panic when gunshots rang out from the corner of Washington and Union streets. One woman said she hid in a coat room at the Strand theater and another said she ran to the Omni Hotel after hearing the shots. No one was injured.

Paré estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 people were downtown on Saturday night.

Elorza said he was also downtown at the time and heard the shots.

“It was frightening, just the whole thing about it,” he said. “The most important thing was to let a lot of the dust settle get a lot more clarity on what was happening. I think the most frightening part is you don’t know exactly what happens in the moment, and every second feels like an eternity.”

The incident was not acknowledged on any official PVDFest social media pages over the weekend. Elorza said that was because he felt members of the public should get their information from the city’s public safety department.

“As soon as it turns into a public safety matter, we take our guidance from public safety and we take our cues from there,” he said.  “We want to make sure that everyone is aware of what's happening and receiving that message from one centralized place, from the appropriate place, and that’s public safety.”

Elorza praised the city’s police force for how they handled their response.

“They handled it with calm, their training kicks in, they were professionals, they were able to make sure that there were no further incidents,” he said.

Paré and Elorza said city officials will gather to review the incident, but Paré said he didn’t think the police could have been any more prepared.

“I don’t think we could’ve done anything different,” he said. “As I've said, and the mayor has said, we have tens of thousands of people in a footprint downtown, and one individual takes a gun and shoots. It’s virtually impossible to stop that.”

Paré said the department plans to ramp up security for PrideFest this weekend and that there will be uniformed police officers as well as undercover officers and private security on scene.

Elorza encouraged residents and visitors to come downtown for PrideFest and not stay home out of fear.

“Look, the reality is, in this day and time, you can never ever assure anyone 100 percent that nothing will happen,” he said. “But I don’t think that the response that any of us should take is to crawl up into a corner and never come out. There are people who want to scare us into contemplating that, but that’s not the solution, so we're going to come out this weekend for Providence Pride, we’re going to have a great weekend as always and make sure that we take every precaution to make sure that our visitors are safe.” 

— mlist@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @madeleine_list