Three days after the Halloween night shooting that killed 17-year-old Love Cannon and wounded eight other people in Ellendale, Delaware State Police have announced no arrests. There are still more questions than answers.
Here is what is known. Shortly before 10 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, at a private Halloween party in the 18000 block of Beach Highway — a party police say was open to the public with a cover charge, in the words of State Police spokesman Lewis Briggs — someone opened fire from a neighboring property into the crowd. Nine people were shot.
Love Cannon was a senior and a cheerleader at Seaford High School, and her school has offered grief counseling to students and staff. Hours before the shooting, she had been working a Halloween event at the Sonic Drive-In in Bridgeville — “laughing and having fun with her teammates, family and friends,” the restaurant's owner wrote publicly, in a post reported by Delaware Online.
There is some better news in it: the 20-year-old Seaford man who was fighting for his life is now in stable condition. The other seven wounded — two 17-year-old boys from Selbyville; women from Ellendale, Seaford, Greenwood and Laurel; and a 20-year-old man from Seaford — are recovering from injuries that were not life-threatening.
The Uvalde Foundation is offering a $5,000 reward for information, according to Delaware Online. Somebody knows who did this. If you were at that party, or you know something, call Detective B. McDerby at (302) 741-2821 or Delaware Crime Stoppers at (800) 847-3333. Victim support: 1-800-VICTIM-1.
No official portrait of Love has been released, and we will not scrape one or invent one. The photographs with this story are Beach Highway in Ellendale — the road where it happened — and her school, Seaford High (photo courtesy of the Seaford School District).
Sources: Delaware State Police; Delaware Online, Nov. 2–3.
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