It was supposed to be just another laid-back Sunday evening at the Santa Monica Pier. Families everywhere, kids screaming with joy in the Pacific Park arcade, people pounding away at Dance Dance Revolution and those classic claw machines. Then bam around 9 p.m. on March 15, 2026, a big fight blows up and turns into gunfire. Total chaos in seconds flat.
A tweet from X.
There’s this 20-second vertical clip that @unlimited_ls threw up on X (it’s been everywhere since), and local news grabbed it quick. The video starts all chill: tourists messing around, laughing, normal pier stuff. Then five sharp pops echo through. Screams erupt, folks bolt, duck for cover. You see one guy scoop up a little kid and haul ass. Eyewitness David Jonsson summed it up perfectly:
“We heard five gunshots… it was absolute chaos… you could just see the terror on everybody’s faces.”
Santa Monica PD rolled up fast after the 911 flood officers were already patrolling nearby, which probably kept it from getting way uglier. They locked the area down, patched up one victim shot in the arm right there on scene, and got him to the hospital. The pier stayed shut for hours while they collected shell casings and whatever else, but it reopened the next day like nothing happened (tourists gotta tourist, I guess).
The other injured person? Walked into a hospital on their own with a graze wound. That’s when things clicked for detectives the guy was the shooter himself. They arrested 18-year-old Jaysawn Williams from Rialto, California, on March 17 after he got treated. He’s booked in Santa Monica Jail now, facing assault with a firearm and grossly negligent discharge charges.
Both wounds were non-life-threatening, thank God no fatalities. That viral clip definitely sped the story around and got more people sending in their own videos, but police are stressing: don’t just post it online send it straight to investigators so they can use it properly without all the misinformation flying.
Investigation’s still ongoing. If you’ve got tips, reach out to Detective Esteban Hernandez or the watch commander at SMPD.
Stuff like this at one of the most iconic tourist spots in the country millions hit that pier every year really hammers home how fast things can go sideways in crowded public places. Quick police work likely stopped a nightmare, but man, it still rattled a lot of families who just wanted a fun night out.
