DAYTON — “I felt my heart start to beat out of my chest,” is how Jackie Nash, a parade goer at the Dayton Holiday Festival, described the feeling as she saw people at the parade running for safety away from what she assumed was going to be another tragedy.
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“I didn’t know what to think because you see so many of these mass shootings on television and on the news all the time,” Nash said in an interview with News Center 7′s John Bedell. “It was actually very scary.”
The 50th annual Dayton Holiday Festival will be memorable for all the wrong reasons after a single gunshot during the Children’s Parade sent festival goers into chaos, running for safety.
On late Monday afternoon, DPD sent News Center 7 a statement that said they’re still looking for the person who fired the shot. No one was injured due to the gunfire.
DPD added that there were at least two fights, one before the gunshot and one following the gunshot. Police said one of the fights was related to the gunfire.
Four juveniles were arrested for disorderly conduct.
Nash described the moments before the chaos as an exciting time that she had been looking forward to.
She was sitting on the main float and waiting for the OK to pull out onto the parade route when they heard the gunshot.
“We all kind of looked that way, not really sure what was going on and then we saw everybody running and one of them said, that was a gun shot and we all just kind of jumped off the float and headed to the parking garage,” Nash said.
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Nash, along with many others, headed to the Schuster Center Parking Garage to take cover inside “Santa’s” SUV.
A patron at the Schuster Performing Arts Center contacted this newsroom to report that patrons were told to remain in their seats at intermission.
News Center 7 has learned that police, using a bullhorn, at one point told people attending the event to leave downtown.
“It’s actually very heartbreaking that you can’t even take your children out to see something like this in your own city that you grew up in,” Nash said, “Now we’re all scared to even go down there to watch it.”
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Sandy Gudorf, the President of Downtown Dayton Partnership, an organization that plans, executes and manages the Dayton Holiday Festival, shares the frustration the community is feeling.
“Its disappointing that one individual or small group of individuals ruined it for the entire community,” Gudorf said. “When something like this happens in any community, it’s heartbreaking and we see incidents like this all over the country.”
Festivals of this size take a significant amount of money and time to successfully execute and ensure the safety of residents attending.
The Downtown Dayton Partnership and Dayton Police worked closely to develop a solid and strong safety plan, Gudorf said in an interview with John Bedell. More than 30 officers were downtown at the time of the event.
“The entire event was fabulous, people were having a good time and enjoying themselves until this disturbance,” Gudorf said. “We’re thankful that no one got hurt and we’re also appreciative of the Dayton Police Department (DPD) immediate and fast action to make sure that no one was hurt.”
We will continue to update this story as we learn more.
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