Nick Penzenstadler

USA TODAY

DENVER — Police say one person is dead and seven were wounded Saturday afternoon in a shooting and stabbing near the Denver Coliseum.

Police Chief Robert White said four people were shot in an exchange of gunfire, one fatally. He said one person was stabbed and three had minor injuries from the melee shortly before 1 p.m. MT.

No arrests have been made, but police are interviewing witnesses and a "person of interest."

The Colorado Motorcycle Expo was being held in the area and will be canceled Sunday. Police declined to name any specific groups or gangs involved in the incident, but acknowledged the event is a gathering place for nationally chartered motorcycle organizations.

"We had off-duty officers there monitoring the various groups," White said. "This happened so rapidly they weren't able to prevent it from occurring."

A source told KUSA-TV that the incident involved two different motorcycle clubs. Another man, Darren Moffitt, was eating in a nearby restaurant when the shooting happened. He told the station he remembers somebody yelling for everyone to get on the floor, and crawled under the table.

He said the air smelled like smoke, and when he left the restaurant, he walked through a puddle of blood.

There was a large police presence at Denver Health, the hospital where victims were being treated. The hospital's emergency room was placed on lockdown Saturday afternoon as a precaution, but the lockdown was later lifted, hospital officials said.

Kevin McVaney, an emergency physician at Denver Health, said seven patients were taken to the hospital from the shooting scene. Of those, one died, three remain in critical condition and the others are in stable condition.