Kansas City, Mo. ? After a slight drop in homicides last year, Kansas City began 2005 with five people shot to death over a 30-hour period during the holiday weekend. Two other shooting victims were hospitalized in serious condition.

Following two fatal shootings on New Year’s Day, three people were slain early Sunday.

Last year the city reported 91 homicides, down from 93 in 2003.

Police said there were no apparent connections among the weekend shootings.

Police have identified four of the victims, including Jeffrey B. Dunham, 24, of Independence. He was shot about 2 a.m. Saturday outside a nightclub. Police said he was standing behind a friend who was involved in an argument after an earlier dispute at a tavern in the city’s Westport neighborhood.

According to police, one of Dunham’s friends argued there with a former girlfriend, and three men who overheard them got involved. Dunham’s friend then left to meet Dunham at the nightclub.

Police said they were standing outside the bar when three men pulled up in a sport utility vehicle and began shouting at them. Police said that without warning, one of the men in the vehicle shot Dunham three times.

Late Saturday night, 35-year-old Stevelle Clark, of Independence, was found shot to death on the porch of a residence. Police spokesman Darin Sapp said the man who lived in the house did not know Clark or how he got on the porch.

Early Sunday, police found one person shot to death and another critically wounded. They said witnesses reported the two were shot by people who then fled in a vehicle.

A little more than an hour later police answering a disturbance call found three people shot inside a car, two of them fatally. Sapp said police thought another vehicle had pulled alongside the car and that people inside it fired numerous shots.