This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

When they heard gunshots at a crowded Halloween house party, Tiara Chambers and her friends ran into a tiny room, shut the door and tried to stay quiet.

There were about seven of them, packed inside a washroom. They heard someone at the door. It was another young woman, saying: “I’m shot! I’m shot!”

Chambers, 24, tried to calm the woman, afraid of drawing attention. Then she heard more shots.

“They just kept going,” she said, “and all you hear, throughout the house, is, ‘He’s dead!’ ‘He’s dead!’ ‘She’s not breathing!’”

Chambers later learned that one of the five people killed on Thursday in Orinda, California was her friend Omar Taylor, a DJ at the party. The 24-year-old grew up in nearby Richmond and was hardworking and family focused, she said. He had a young daughter.

“Once I got confirmation that it was him, I just broke down,” Chambers said. “He was the only reason I came to the party. He was just trying to make a living.”

Taylor invited Chambers to the party in the small, affluent suburb east of San Francisco, at an Airbnb rental. Local officials said a “mansion party” had been advertised on social media, drawing at least 100 from across the Bay Area.

According to the Contra Costa sheriff’s office, the other four people killed in Orinda were 19-year-old Oshiana Tompkins; 22-year-old Tiyon Farley; 23-year-old Ramon Hill Jr and 29-year-old Javin County. Several others were wounded.

California governor Gavin Newsom called the shooting a “horrific tragedy” but wrote: “This will barely make the news today. That’s how numb we have become to this.”

California: shooting in Long Beach leaves three dead and nine injured Read more

He also called on Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to stop blocking national gun control laws.

Orinda, a wealthy town of fewer than 20,000 people, has seen little gun violence. Early local reactions to the shooting focused on whether the town needed to do more to regulate short-term rental properties. According to chief David Cook of the Orinda police, the party was held in a house “not made to hold 100 people”.

In a statement, Airbnb spokesman Charlie Urbancic said: “We are horrified by this tragedy [and] have taken action to ban the booking guest from our platform.”

Airbnb told reporters the listing for the house explicitly banned parties, weapons, smoking and marijuana. Michael Wang, the house owner, told the San Francisco Chronicle the woman who rented it claimed she was holding a family reunion for a dozen people. He said he called the police on Thursday “after looking on his home security camera and seeing well over a dozen people at the home”.

The Associated Press reported that the renter “falsely claimed she wanted the Airbnb so her asthmatic family members could escape wildfire smoke”.

City officials raised a history of complaints about the property. According to an official timeline provided to reporters, the owner was contacted 15 times for complaints about overfilled garbage cans and renters exceeding the 13-person maximum occupancy for short-term rentals.

Mayor Inga Miller said flags would fly at half-staff, and that the city council would work to address the issue of “short-term rentals in our community”.

On social media, some San Francisco Bay area residents said they were frustrated by how media coverage focused on the property owner, neighbors and Airbnb, rather than on the victims.

Others said they had seen discussion about the shooting change as soon as it became clear the people hosting the party and many attendees were young, black and from outside Orinda.

The Bay Area has seen a dramatic decrease in gun violence over the past decade, with a more than 30% drop in the gun homicide rate. Nationwide, homicides fell only about 7%. But stark racial disparities remain. The risk of being killed with a gun is 22 times higher for black Bay Area residents than for those who are white.

Chambers, a Richmond native, said she knew any big gathering could end in tragedy. Gun violence, she said, “has been a reality my whole life”. In 2010, her brother was killed. She recalled saying a prayer with her cousin and best friend, just in case, before they went to the party on Thursday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Law enforcement officials walk up the driveway towards the scene of the shooting. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

When she arrived, Chambers helped Taylor carry in his DJ equipment, then went to the third floor, looking for a calmer scene. The charge at the door was $10, she said, and the party had drawn some people who were underage.

“Does your mom know you’re here?” she remembered asking two girls. “They said, ‘Yeah, this is our first time at a party.’”

“If anything happens and y’all see us run, just run with us,” Chambers recalled telling them. “It doesn’t matter, we’re staying together. You never know at these kinds of parties. Guys from different areas get together – it’s always something.”

After the gunshots started, the women crowded into the tiny room with Chambers started making frantic calls. Chambers called 911. When law enforcement arrived, she said, the women were told to come outside with their hands in the air. Chambers said she had to step over more than one body. She did not recognize them.

Outside, she found out her friend had been killed.

Nearly a day later, officials had not provided information about the suspect or suspects.

“We haven’t been able to confirm how many suspects there are,” said Cook, the police chief. “We have no reason to believe they were from Orinda.”

Detectives asked if anyone recognized the people in a video clip. By the next morning, many Instagram accounts for people who promoted the party had been deleted.