4th of July shootings: Children, elderly among victims of bloody weekend
A wave of gun violence swept through the nation over the holiday weekend, leaving dozens dead from coast-to-coast — with children as young as 5 among the casualties.
The bloodshed marred a sunny Independence Day weekend throughout the US, including in the Big Apple, where the number of shootings tripled over the past week compared to last year, and Chicago, where police reported 87 shootings and 17 deaths.
Nearly a dozen of the victims were children caught in the crossfire, according to reports:
- A 5-year-old girl was shot in the head by her 4-year-old brother in Redford Township, a Detroit suburb, early Monday. Police said the toddler grabbed the loaded gun from an unlocked closet and shot his sister, believing it was a toy gun. The girl is in stable condition.
- In Philadelphia, an unidentified 6-year-old boy was died after being shot in the chest on Sunday afternoon, one of five shootings in five hours in the City of Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Inquirer said.
- Davon McNeal, 11, was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Washington, DC, around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when he stopped by a family cookout to pick up some cellphone equipment, WTTG-TV reported. Authorities are now offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to his killers.
- Natalia Wallace, 7, was playing outside her grandmother’s house in Chicago’s West Side around 7 p.m. Saturday when three gunmen opened fire at the revelers, killing the girl and wounding a 32-year-old man.
- Police on Monday identified an 8-year-old Atlanta girl killed July 4 as Secoriea Turner. The girl died after a group of men opened fire on her mother’s car around 10 p.m., not far from the Wendy’s fast-food restaurant where Rayshard Brooks was shot.
“These aren’t police officers shooting people on the streets of Atlanta,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said at an emotional press conference with Turner’s family. “These are members of the community shooting each other. And in this case, it is the worst possible outcome.”
“Enough is enough,” she said.
But children weren’t the only casualties of the bloody holiday weekend.
Paullette Thorpe, 74, died in Durham, North Carolina, after being struck with “celebratory gunfire” that was fired into the air on July 4, and a 39-year-old mother was killed when gunmen riddled the family vehicle with bullets — wounding her husband and three children, 9 to 15 years old.
Early Sunday, 30-year-old Clifford Durell Manor was shot and killed during an argument outside a San Antonio hookah bar, KSAT-TV reported, and a father and son — Mark Ivie Sr., 43, and his 20-year-old son, Mark Ivie, Jr. — were charged early Sunday with shooting four men and beating a fifth in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, WHTM-TV said.
“We must keep violent offenders in jail longer. We must,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told WLS-TV. “We should revamp the electronic monitoring program. The electronic monitoring program, it’s clearly not working. We will not stop until this violence ends.”
Share this article:
Source: Read Full Article