Two men were killed and two more wounded after a dispute surrounding a basketball game erupted into gunfire Tuesday night in Severn, Anne Arundel County Police said.

Officers responded around 7 p.m. to the 8100 block of Meade Village Road, which is in the Meade Village community, after several people called the county’s 911 center about multiple people being shot, Assistant Police Chief William Lowry said at a Tuesday night news briefing.

Arriving to an “extremely chaotic” and “very confusing” scene, responders ultimately located three men who were injured, Lowry and Capt. Tim Davis, of the Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division, told reporters.

Officers tried life-saving measures, but medics pronounced 23-year-old Derrick Purcell Ahmad McDonald, of Severn, dead at the scene, police said Wednesday in a news release. The fire department took 28-year-old Mack Samuel Galloway III, of Glen Burnie, to the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center, where doctors declared him dead.

Officials originally said the third victim they found at the scene had been shot but clarified in the news release that the 26-year-old man “was injured by a possible metal fragment resulting from the gunfire.” Authorities took him to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, describing his injuries as non life-threatening.

While officers were responding, they pulled over a vehicle near Pioneer Drive and Jacobs Road, “occupied by two males who were believed to have been involved in the shooting,” the department said in the news release. Authorities took the passenger, who had been shot, to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore with what they described as non life-threatening injuries.

The county’s Crisis Intervention Team, which consists of officers with special mental health training, were quickly on the scene Tuesday night “trying to do some mitigation with the affected family members,” Lowry said.

Detectives assigned to the department’s Western District Station and homicide unit were canvassing the community for clues Tuesday night, Davis said.

Along with crime scene technicians, detectives “collected multiple items of evidentiary value at the crime scene and from the vehicle” where police found the additional gunshot victim, the department said in the release. “Several witnesses were located and interviewed regarding the shooting.”

Investigators are still working to determine a motive, but say their investigation has revealed “this was a targeted incident and not a random act of violence.”

Lowry, Davis and Capt. Chad McFarlane, commander of the department’s Western District Station, expressed sympathy for the Meade Village community.

“You should be able to go out to the basketball courts and play basketball, go out to the community and walk and talk to different people,” Davis said.

“The Police Department is here for you,” added McFarlane. “We have been in constant contact with our clergy, our County Council members, as well as our community leaders to make sure we have an impact on reducing the violence and making sure we’re here to provide as many resources as we can to the community to help them heal through times like this.”

McFarlane said the department would in the coming days “maintain a high visible presence and we will be out here to answer any questions or concerns that the community may have. Our main impact here is to make sure the community feels safe and to make sure there are no further instances of violence.”

County Councilman Pete Smith, a Democrat who represents the community where the shooting happened, said he was at the scene when police told a family that their loved one had died.

“It breaks my heart to see our communities affected like this,” Smith told The Banner. “It breaks my heart that two people are deceased because of a dispute that happened on a basketball court.”

He said it was critical to support police as they investigate the deadly shooting and to “get everyone together in our community and wrap our arms around the people who are left picking up the pieces.”

“The biggest issue,” Smith said, “is that guns are just too easily available and it’s sad when disputes can’t be remediated in a more peaceful manner.”

Officials encouraged anyone with information about the shooting to call police at 410-222-4700.

This article has been updated.