The Buckingham

A 44-year-old man was charged with attempted murder last Tuesday. The man was involved in an early morning shooting in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The suspect Nathan Van Wilkins is being charged with 17 counts of attempted murder. The shooting occurred at 12:30 a.m. According to authorities Wilkins is also being charged with attempted murder earlier that night. Tuesday night he was in Tuscaloosa County Jail with a $2 million bond.

In the afternoon Wilkins went into a  business in Jasper, explaining that he was involved in an incident. He was then taken to the police station under custody and later on released to return to Tuscaloosa. The security cameras show a man standing out side the bar appearing to be looking for someone for several minutes and then the man begins to shoot with a military-style rifle.

Sergeant Brent Blankley of the Tuscaloosa police said 17 people were admitted to the DCH hospital. He could not give the estimate of how many of those people were actually suffering from a gun shot wound. Only one person is in “extremely critical” condition, and three are in critical condition.

The police are working closely with federal authorities to take a closer look into the security footage. The have recovered eleven shell casing according to Blankley. Those casings will be compared to the incident happening earlier in the evening.

The DCH hospital went on lockdown due to the amount of patients after the incident. A University of Alabama senior Riley Dunn was injured in the shooting and told the Tuscaloosa News that 80 to 90 people were in the bar during the shooting. Dunn said, “The first gunshot took place, then about 20 seconds later, that’s when he really started firing them off. After that, everyone really scattered.”

A witness told CNN that all he could see were “sparks and people ducking and glass busting. We never saw the guy shooting.”