ST. LOUIS — Shots fired while a crowd gathered at a balloon release Wednesday night left one man dead and four others injured.

The balloon release on Wells Avenue in the city's Hamilton Heights neighborhood was intended to mourn the victim of a recent homicide.

During the event, just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, shots were fired in the 5900 block of Wells Avenue, about a block from Martin Luther King Drive.

Police found four shooting victims along that block. A fifth man showed up at the hospital before medics arrived.

One of the men hospitalized was in critical unstable condition. The other three were stable.

The victims of the quintuple shooting range in age from 19 to early 30s, said Mitch McCoy, a police department spokesman. The name of the man who died has not been released.

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