STOCKTON, Calif. — Law enforcement officials appealed for witnesses to come forward after a mass shooting in Stockton at a child’s birthday party killed three children and one adult and injured 11 others inside a packed banquet hall on Saturday evening, Nov. 29, 2025. Multiple gunmen fired both inside and outside the strip-mall venue where the shooting broke out in a targeted attack, according to investigators who had made no arrests by Monday, Dec. 1, 2025.
Police search for witnesses after 6 shot, killed at Stockton birthday party.
The Stockton mass shooting took place at about 6 pm at Monkey Space, a children’s party venue and banquet hall located in a strip mall near Thornton Road and Lucile Avenue, where an estimated 100 to 150 people were attending a 2-year-old’s birthday, according to local station KCRA 3 and other officials. Four people died — three children, ages 8, 9, and 14, and a 21-year-old man — and 11 others, between preteens and young adults, were rushed to area hospitals.
Sheriff Patrick Withrow of San Joaquin County said the gunfire had started inside the crowded hall and “worked its way outdoors” into a parking lot, in which shell casings and at least one firearm were later found. “Preliminarily, it looks like we may have had a targeted incident on individuals at the party,” he said, noting that detectives thought there were multiple suspects who entered the party, “probably looking for somebody in particular.”
Deputies and federal partners from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are reviewing security video, social media posts , and cellphone footage in what Withrow described as a “very active and ongoing” investigation. Anyone with information was asked to call Stockton Crime Stoppers at 209-946-0600 or text anonymous tips by texting “SJSOTIP” to 847411, echoing requests that the Associated Press summarized and that a comprehensive SFGATE report also highlighted.
At least one victim was in critical condition Sunday night, while others were in fair or stable condition, hospital officials told local ABC affiliate KABC. The 8-year-old who died was a student in the Stockton Unified School District, which has begun providing counseling to classmates and teachers dealing with the sudden loss.
“No parent should ever have to bury their child,” Mayor Christina Fugazi of Stockton said at a vigil near the scene, where over 100 people had assembled to pray and place flowers at an expanding memorial, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. She referred to the attack as “group gang violence” and, in comments covered first by KCRA 3, described it as “a pure act of terrorism,” though sheriff’s officials did not confirm a gang motive.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that the Stockton mass shooting was “horrific” and he and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom were “profoundly heartbroken” over the fact that all of the victims are children and young adults, offering state resources to assist in investigating.“Horrific news out of Stockton,” the governor tweeted. Officials said at least $25,000 would be offered as a reward for information that led to an arrest and conviction.
Stockton mass shooting: A fatal house call in a long history of tragedy
For many residents, the Stockton mass shooting gave old wounds a fresh twist, dating back more than 30 years. In 1989, a gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle attacked the playground of Cleveland Elementary School; five children were killed, and about 30 others were wounded in what was later known as the Stockton schoolyard massacre. Coverage then, including Los Angeles Times reports on the Cleveland Elementary misery, helped prompt California’s first ban of specific assault-style weapons and changed California’s gun politics.”
Those who lived through that 1989 shooting have spent decades advocating for change and helping each other heal, as chronicled during a 25th anniversary panel on CapRadio’s Insight program and subsequently in a 2023 ABC10 retrospective about Cleveland Elementary survivors. Sunday’s vigil near the latest crime scene brought out some of those long-time advocates, who said they were heartbroken to see yet another generation of Stockton children ensnared by gunfire.
More recently, the city has been plagued by the Stockton serial shootings, a series of unsolved killings in 2021 and early 2022 that left seven dead before an arrest. (CBS) – Suspect Wesley Brownlee was recently indicted on six counts of murder in connection with those attacks, prosecutors said last week, according to recent reporting from CBS Sacramento on the Stockton serial killings case and elsewhere. That earlier case, described in a widely circulated timeline of the area’s recent gun violence, had already put Stockton at the center of national conversations about public safety.
Now, the Stockton mass shooting at a child’s party has intensified those calls for reform. Community leaders who mobilized after the schoolyard massacre say they are once more calling on lawmakers to address access to firearms, youth outreach, and the context that allows retaliatory shootings to spill into public places. Residents who filled the vigil Sunday night said they want to see whoever is responsible caught — but more importantly, never again do they want children in the crosshairs.
As detectives search for possible suspects and a motive, officials say the first step is simply getting witnesses to speak up. “Families should be together not at the hospital standing next to their loved one, praying that they come out of that by some miracle,” Fugazi said urging anyone with video, rumors or anything in the way of information about how the Stockton mass shooting all unfolded, who was involved and what kind of vehicle they were driving to reach out now before another celebration ends in gunfire.
