Two people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting outside a popular Norfolk restaurant early Saturday morning, police said. Sierra M. Jenkins, a 25-year-old journalist for the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, was among those killed, her employer and police confirmed.

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       Police received reports of a shooting outside Chicho’s Pizza Backstage shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday. When officers arrived they found five people had been shot. One of them, Devon M. Harris, 25, of Portsmouth, was pronounced dead at the scene. Jenkins and three male gunshot victims were transported to the hospital, where Jenkins died of her injuries.

       A Chicho’s manager told the Pilot an argument broke out in front of the restaurant before he heard gunfire. Jenkins was leaving the restaurant and was caught in the crossfire, he said.

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       Jane Harper, a colleague of Jenkins’s, said on Twitter that Jenkins was scheduled to work Saturday, and Harper was asked to fill in when editors couldn’t reach Jenkins. She soon “found out why,” she said, and ended up writing the story about her co-worker’s death.

       For two years, she's covered the stories of Hampton Roads with compassion and care. She worked at Atlanta Magazine and CNN before coming home to Hampton Roads in 2020. Most recently, Sierra has been reporting on school policies and issues across the region. pic.twitter.com/mlArrBL06K

       — The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) March 19, 2022

       Jenkins’s father, Maurice Jenkins, told the Pilot his daughter “wasn’t much of a going-out kind of person at all,” but that a close friend was visiting so she had made an exception.

       Nine days ago, Jenkins tweeted about the “highlight” of her week — scoring an expensive floor mirror at a huge discount. Her dad was helping her fix the lining, she said, posting a photo of him with the mirror and a pile of critically acclaimed books. She had just moved into her first apartment and turned 25 on March 13, according to the Pilot.

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       Jenkins was raised in Norfolk before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Georgia State University in 2019. She interned at Atlanta Magazine and CNN before being hired as a news assistant for CNN Health, according to her LinkedIn profile. She started at the Pilot in December 2020 as a breaking news reporter before taking on the education beat.

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       In a phone interview with The Washington Post, her editor, Brian Root, said Jenkins believed passionately in journalism. She also really wanted to make a difference in her community and with her new beat, where she was covering new Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s plans for Virginia schools, student learning loss during the pandemic and big changes at local colleges.

       “I have been very fortunate in my career that I’ve worked with several people who went on to become rock stars in our business, so I know them when I see them, and Sierra was on the way to becoming a rock star,” Root said. “It’s all about willingness and work ethic, and good god, she had that. And it hurts to talk about her in the past tense.”

       Police said anyone with information about the shooting should contact the Norfolk Crime Line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP or submit a tip through the mobile app P3Tips.