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Source: CHANDAN KHANNA / Getty

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber has declared his jurisdiction in a state of emergency after a pair of unrelated shooting incidents during Spring Break Weekend. This marks the second year in a row the popular vacation spot has enacted the policy, and Gelber made the announcement at a press conference Monday afternoon.

“We don’t ask for spring break,” Gelber told reporters. “We don’t promote it, we don’t encourage it. Uh, we just endure it. And frankly, it’s not something we want to endure. We don’t want spring break… We just simply cannot have people come to our city and have to worry about being shot.”

As a result, the City of Miami Beach will impose a curfew from as of Thursday, March 24 at 12 a.m. through Monday, March 28 at 6 a.m. The measure comes after three individuals were shot shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, and two more women were victims of gun violence on Monday around 1 a.m.

That brings the nationwide tally of shooting episodes this past Spring Break Weekend to at least nine. Some of the other cities that dealt with gun violence in the past few days are:

    • Norfolk, VA, where two people were killed and three injured after an altercation outside a local restaurant. Journalist Sierra Jenkins, 25, was supposed to cover the story, but her publication later discovered she was one of the two deceased parties;

 

    • Fayetteville, NC, where four rival biker gangs allegedly squared off against each other in front of a hotel. The “confrontation” left three people dead and three more injured; and

 

  • Austin, Texas, near this year’s annual SXSW Festival. What began as “a disturbance between two groups of people,” per the Austin Police Department, ended with four people shot. The victims were taken to area hospitals, and their injuries were deemed non-life threatening. “I know they made over 30 arrests and arrested over 19 people with handguns on their persons,” Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday said in a statement. “So it was a very busy night leading up to the shooting.”