Escalating gang-related violence that culminated with multiple shots being fired into a crowd of people brought an untimely end to an annual community event in East Liberty yesterday.

The remainder of "E-Fest" -- an urban street festival scheduled to be held Saturday and yesterday -- was cancelled at around 8:30 p.m. Saturday after Pittsburgh police responded to a call for shots fired near the East Busway on Penn Avenue.

According to the Zone 5 police, fights that had been occurring throughout the day "escalated a little more each time" until at least 12 shots were fired into a crowd where a large fistfight had started. Police said violence at the event has been a problem in the past. Last year the festival had also ended early because of fist fights.

Police said no one was shot and no serious injuries were reported.

The festival, in its seventh year, is an event organized by local urban youths with the help of the East End Cooperative Ministry. This year seven high school students were responsible for finding vendors, entertainment and sponsorship for the event.

Richard Payne Jr., a member of the East End Cooperative Ministry who attended the festival Saturday, said the planning that went into the event makes the cancellation all the more disappointing. He characterized the perpetrators of the violence as mostly 12- to 16-year-olds from various neighbors "who feel they need to represent."

"I don't think they understand the scope of who they affected," he said. "The young people who put this together worked all year for this event."

Payne said he had tried all day to keep things under control and that he was in the middle of the dispute that ultimately brought the festival to an end.

"We kept trying to talk to the kids, telling them to put their bandannas and sashes away."

With other event organizers, he was trying to break up the largest altercation of the day "when bullets went past us."

By late afternoon yesterday, all signs that the event was ever scheduled to occur, other than a stack of tables and chairs on the corner of Penn Avenue and Highland Street, had disappeared.

"Because of a few, it gives this big picture that a community can't come together," Payne said. "And if we try to do it again next year people are going to be leery; it just puts a black cloud over the whole event."