CHESTERFIELD COUNTY -- Chesterfield Police said they received several disturbance calls about aloud party before it turned violent and deadly but did not respond to any of those calls due to a high volume of other calls that took priority.
During a press conference Saturday, Major Brad Badgerow with Chesterfield Police said 20-year-old Taborri Carter was shot and killed at a graduation celebration Friday around 10:20 p.m. on Stepney Road.
Five other people between the ages 16 and 21 were shot and survived. Two additional teenagers were hurt from injuries not related to gun violence.
UNCUT VIDEO: Police on scene of Chesterfield graduation party shooting
Police received at least five calls Friday night regarding a disturbance in the area to include music, loud voices, and cars before a sixth call was made to report a shooting.
A spokesperson for the police department said the six calls were made at:
- 9:38 p.m.
- 9:44 p.m.
- 10:04 p.m.
- 10:06 p.m.
- 10:19 p.m.
- 10:21 p.m. (shooting)
Police said it's unclear if the calls were made from separate individuals or the same person.
However officers were not deployed because they were busy handling other calls of higher importance.
Badgerow said the other calls included:
- A suicidal subject
- A reported abduction
- A DUI crash
- Car break-ins
- A disturbance at a group home
"When you hear those compared to what we first get as a disturbance or loud music, that'll hold for a little bit," Badgerow said. "But then obviously, when the "shots fired" call came in is when we left the other stuff pretty quickly and showed up."
CBS 6 asked how many calls it would typically take for police to decide to respond to a disturbance, but Badgerow said it's a bit more complicated than that.
"I don't know that you can really say there's a typical, because if it's loud music, it's loud music. That's what we know," he responded. "If we didn't have all that other stuff going on, then we would have been there."
WATCH: Police hold news conference after deadly Chesterfield graduation party
Badgerow said there was nothing police could've done earlier in the night to prevent the party from getting out of control.
He said investigative teams did not have any warning about the event in advance, and they were not made aware of a flier circulating on social media promoting the party.
"We are often able to get ahead of things if we know about them ahead of time. So sometimes people will send us the screenshot there and say, 'Hey, y'all might want to be aware of this kind of thing.' In that case, we're able to get our community engagement folks on it, our analysts, our media folks, and really look into what that might be and have a plan. In this case, we didn't have that heads up, so it's certainly unfortunate," Badgerow explained.
Badgerow emphasized the police department has a strong relationship with the community and will dedicate as many resources as possible to finding out what happened and who was responsible for the shooting.
CBS 6 asked police if resources were fully staffed Friday night. A spokesperson for Chesterfield Police responded immediately confirming they were.
The spokesperson also said police are working on providing more details on the calls made to dispatch Friday night regarding the party along with additional information about the five high priority calls that kept officers busy that same night.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact the Chesterfield County Police Department at 804-748-1251 or Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660, or through the P3 app.
Depend on CBS 6 News and WTVR.com for in-depth coverage of this important local story. Anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
