Artemio Ramirez said he was inside on the phone with a 911 dispatcher about a fight outside his nightclub in the 1400 block of Lamar when he heard someone open fire.

"While I'm talking to the operator, I heard gunshots," he said.

Ramirez, who owns the Simba Discotech in downtown Wichita Falls, said things happened quickly during the next few minutes. The violence erupted outside a short time after the nightclub closed at 2 a.m. Sunday.

At one point, Ramirez looked outside to see what was happening.

"I saw two guys down," he said.

The shooting early Sunday morning wounded three men, and soon led to more gunshots, when a suspect in that shooting fired at police officers, said Sgt. Joe Snyder, public information officer for the Wichita Falls Police Department.

The shooting on Lamar sent 17-year-old Joel Gutierrez, 20-year-old Lorenzo Antonio Mendoza and 20-year-old Christian Gallegos to the emergency room at United Regional Health Care System with gunshot wounds. There was no word Sunday on their conditions.

Gutierrez was shot in the head, and so was Gallegos, Snyder said. Mendoza suffered a chest wound.

The Wichita Falls Police Department received calls at 2:16 a.m. about a large fight in the 1400 block of Lamar, Snyder said.

"When officers arrived they found three gunshot victims," he said.

Witnesses described a suspect vehicle in the shooting, and members of the police department's gang task force quickly found it in the area.

The officers followed the vehicle, and one of the people inside it fired a gun at the officers' vehicle, Snyder said. The bullet struck the front of the police vehicle, and an officer returned fire, striking the back of the other vehicle.

That gunfire exchange did not wound anyone.

Two men surrendered at 10th and Polk streets.

Snyder said officers arrested 20-year-old Jose Francisco Olvera and 21-year-old Juan Olvera Dominguez early Sunday, each in connection with three aggravated assault charges. Detectives later added three more aggravated assault charges for both men.

The two were held on the six charges Sunday afternoon in the Wichita County Jail, which had the 21-year-old man listed under the name Juan Olvera.

According to the jail, both men had $100,000 bonds set on each of the first three aggravated assault charges, and the three additional charges against each man were pending.

The investigation took dozens of members of the Wichita Falls Police Department - including the criminal investigation section, the crime scene unit and the special operations section - to several scenes in downtown and central Wichita Falls as they gathered evidence and information.

Police had help in the investigation from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Wichita County Sheriff's Office and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Control. The Wichita Falls Fire Department helped in the search for evidence.

Investigators were still looking into a motive in the shooting Sunday, Snyder said.

It was a hard scene for people close to the scene to see.

Ramirez said he knew Gutierrez, the youngest of the shooting victims, from coaching him in sports when the young man was 7 to 11 years old. He said all the families were in his thoughts Sunday.

Ramirez said he didn't see the shooting himself, and heard only what people who were closer to it said. It happened in front of a lot of people, he said. Some were getting ready to leave since the club's closing time had passed. They turn the lights on at 10 or 15 minutes before 2 a.m. to get people ready to leave, he said. The club uses wristbands in allowing patrons who are 21 and older to drink, but younger people are allowed inside.

He said he believed the victims and one of the people involved in the shooting had been inside the club earlier, but stressed that this incident happened outside.

He wasn't sure whether it started over someone's girlfriend, or whether something else might have sparked it.

If it was a gang issue, this could have happened anywhere, he said.

In the 16 months the Simba Discotech has been operating downtown, it hasn't seen any kind of violence like this, Ramirez said.

Patrons have to go through several layers of security, and aren't allowed inside with any type of weapons, and if problems arise, people know they'll have to leave, he said.

"Security, it's high, it's extremely, extremely good," he said.

He expressed sorrow for the families on behalf of everyone who works at the club about what happened early Sunday.