The shooting broke out in the 1000 block of K Street. One suspect continued firing as he ran north on 10th Street toward J Street. Bullets struck at least three buildings and three vehicles, including the tour bus belonging to Aly & AJ's touring crew -- no one aboard was injured, but the bus bore the scars of the crossfire. The violence was over in minutes, but its geography was sprawling: shell casings scattered across multiple blocks, victims falling where they stood. Four of the wounded were rushed to the trauma unit at UC Davis Medical Center. Five were taken to Sutter Medical Center. Two more walked into Sutter on their own nearly an hour later. By the next day, seven of the twelve injured had been discharged. The dead could not be so quickly accounted for.

The Sacramento County Coroner identified the victims: Johntaya Alexander, 21; Melinda Davis, 57; Sergio Harris, 38; Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32; Yamile Martinez-Andrade, 21; and Devazia Turner, 29. Three of them -- Alexander, Davis, and Martinez-Andrade -- were bystanders, people who happened to be on K Street when the shooting started, caught in a crossfire that had nothing to do with them. The other three -- Harris, Hoye-Lucchesi, and Turner -- were, according to court documents filed on April 16, participants in the gang dispute that sparked the gunfight. At least one of them fired a weapon. The randomness of who lived and who died -- a 57-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman killed alongside men involved in the fight -- captured the indiscriminate nature of a shootout on a crowded street.

On April 6, Sacramento police confirmed that the shooting was gang-related, with one side tied to the Crips and the other to the rival Bloods. Three suspects -- Smiley Martin, his brother Dandrae Martin, and Mtula Payton -- were each charged with three counts of murder. The details that emerged were damning. Hours before the shooting, Dandrae Martin had streamed himself on Facebook Live brandishing a handgun. Smiley Martin had been sentenced to ten years in prison in 2018 for domestic violence but was released in February 2022 -- just six weeks before the shooting. Among the weapons recovered at the scene was a Glock 19 fitted with a device that converted it to fully automatic fire. Police recovered 114 shell casings in total. Gang violence was not new to Sacramento; a wave of shootings in 2017 had prompted the city council to direct millions of dollars toward neighborhood violence prevention programs. The K Street shooting made clear how far those efforts still had to go. Payton was arrested in Las Vegas on May 28. Smiley Martin died in jail on June 8, 2024, of an accidental drug overdose.

By the evening of April 3, a candlelight vigil had formed at Cesar Chavez Plaza on 10th Street. People brought candles, balloons, and flowers. A second vigil was held the following night. That same day, the Sacramento Kings hosted the Golden State Warriors at the Golden 1 Center, just blocks from where the shooting had occurred. The game began with a moment of silence. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who had been vocal about gun violence for years, told reporters that moments of silence were not enough to solve the problem. President Joe Biden called on Congress to pursue new gun control measures. Governor Gavin Newsom condemned the shooting and tweeted: "We cannot continue to let gun violence be the new normal." Mayor Darrell Steinberg noted that the city had invested $8.1 million in downtown lighting and security. The intersection of 10th and K Street, a few hundred feet from the seat of California's government, had become a crime scene -- and then a memorial, and then a political argument, in the span of a single day.