Three people were injured when gunfire erupted early Sunday on Birmingham's busy Third Avenue West.

The victims included a 9-year-old girl, but police said none of the victims' injuries appear to be life-threatening.

The shootings happened shortly before 1 a.m. in the 700 block of Third Avenue, where crowds traditionally gather during the Magic City Classic weekend.

A male was shot in the leg and taken by private vehicle to UAB Hospital. Multiple police cruisers were parked outside the hospital around that vehicle, including an evidence technician's van.

A female was also shot, but details of her injury weren't immediately available

The 9-year-old girl was shot in the neck but police said it was a "through-and-through" wound, and she is expected to be OK. She was driven to Children's of Alabama by her mother. Her mother said she had just gotten off of work and picked her daughter up from the babysitter and was driving through the area when the shooting happened.

Birmingham police Sgt. Bryan Shelton later Sunday said the shooting happened when a man became enraged while he was trying to get out of a parking lot and exited his vehicle. At some point, he began to fire his weapon into a crowd. Another man returned fire.

At least one vehicle, police said, had more than a dozen bullet holes in it.

Shelton said officers in and around the area were able to capture one suspect. The investigation is ongoing.

Last year three people were shot - one of them fatally - in the same area on the Saturday night during the festivities following the football game. Demarcus Dewon Bennett, 20, was killed and two women were injured - one in the arm and one in the leg.

Birmingham police beefed up security for this year's festivities and multiple police officers said Saturday's game and the concert that followed concluded with no major incidents.

"What we typically see is that the Classic isn't the issue,'' Birmingham police spokesman Sgt. Bryan Shelton said in the day's leading up to the weekend. "What you have is a lot of spinoff events that people put on to attract the patrons, and these spinoff crowds have sometimes caused problems."

"Third Avenue was a cause for concern this year, so we've added extra officers to patrol that entire area and corridor beginning on Wednesday all the way through Sunday,'' he said.

There was a strong police presence along Third Avenue Saturday night and while traffic was heavy in spots, police appeared to have parts of the roadway blocked off to vehicle traffic.