This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/girls-condition-improves-after-shooting-that-rattles-her-dc-neighborhood/2016/04/10/2a381e9c-ff38-11e5-9203-7b8670959b88_story.html

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Girl’s condition improves after shooting that rattles her D.C. neighborhood Girl’s condition improves after shooting that rattles her D.C. neighborhood
(about 3 hours later)
A 7-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet while walking with her parents near their home in Southeast Washington on Friday night was upgraded to fair condition Sunday, as police continued to search for the shooter. Residents of a Southeast D.C. neighborhood rejoiced Sunday to hear that a 7-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet Friday night had been upgraded to fair condition, even as new details emerged about the terrifying incident that had neighbors urging city officials to mount a more urgent response to crime in the area.
The family had returned from dinner and were on the sidewalk on the 2900 block of Knox Place about 9:45 p.m. Friday when a person fired four shots, striking the girl in the abdomen and blowing out the rear window of a nearby car, authorities said. “We’re now experiencing almost a death of week in this particular area,” said Paul Trantham, a Neighbor Advisory Commission member who lives a few blocks from the 2900 block of Knox Place where the girl was struck while coming home from dinner with her family. “It’s ridiculous. We keep seeing the same pattern over and over.”
The child was airlifted Friday night to Children’s National Medical Center, where she was stabilized, according to a police report. Trantham said he and other neighborhood leaders had been in touch with Metropolitan Police Department officials, including Chief Cathy Lanier, about the need for a bigger police presence in the area, even before Friday’s shooting.
Police have not identified the victim, a suspect or a possible motive in what neighbors say is the latest in a spate of shootings in the area. It’s also not clear if someone in the family was the intended target. The handgun used in the shooting had not been recovered as of Saturday evening, and there had been no arrests, said police spokeswoman Aquita Brown. “They all say they understand there’s need for more resources over here, but we don’t see them,” Trantham said.
The family — the 7-year-old and her mother and father — had just parked their car on the street and were walking near a three-story brick apartment building at 2926 Knox Pl. when the shooting occurred, police said. The family lives on the same block. Trantham said he was particularly disappointed not to see a visible police presence over the weekend near Knox Place and Hartford Street where Friday’s shooting occurred.
The shooting marked at least the third time a juvenile was struck by gunfire in recent weeks. “It’s like we’re living in Iraq or Iran,” he said. “It’s a battleground, and yes, the battle is amongst the people who live here, but where’s the chief sending in the cavalry to help the people in the community?”
Lanier didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Police haven’t released the name of the victim, who was airlifted to Children’s National Medical Center, but neighborhood residents identified her father as Antonio Ivey. Officials released no additional information Sunday, but witnesses described a harrowing scene.
Arlene Mobley, whose apartment overlooks Hartford Street, said she saw a young girl with her father and younger brother Friday night walking toward Knox Place. She recognized them as a family she sees regularly and had nicknamed the “homely” family because “they are so tight.”
“The father is always holding the kids’ hands,” said Mobley, 57.
Moments later Mobley heard three gunshots and screaming and looked out to see the family running. Soon, she heard the sound of a car’s screeching wheels, but didn’t see the vehicle.
“My son got killed, and I know that scream,” said Mobley, who said her son was shot to death in 2010. When she saw that the little girl who had been shot, she collapsed, she said.
According to police reports, the family, who live in the neighborhood, had just parked their car on the street and were walking near a three-story brick apartment building at 2926 Knox Pl. when the shooting occurred about 9:45 p.m. A person fired four shots, striking the girl in the abdomen and shattering the rear window of a nearby car, authorities said.
Police have not said if they know of a possible motive.
Evette Barnette, 41, was sitting in her ground-floor apartment at Hanover Courts on Hartford Street when she heard the shots. A few minutes later, she heard a commotion in the lobby and a man yelling “Stay with me! Stay with me!”
She went out to find Ivey cradling the little girl with the younger brother looking on and screaming “My sister!”
“It was just so frantic,” she said Sunday, standing in the entryway that still had blood splattered across the walls and floor.
Barnette grabbed a towel from her apartment and gave it to Ivey, who applied pressure to his daughter’s torso while they waited for paramedics. Barnette, meanwhile, took the 4-year-old boy into her apartment and sat him in front of the TV with cartoons on.
“The girl was screaming ‘Ow! Daddy!’” Barnette said.
The neighborhood was still in an edgy mood two days after the incident, and those that have come before. The sidewalks on Knox Place and Hartford Street are peppered with graffiti memorials to residents previously killed in a neighborhood all-too familiar with gun violence. “RIP Gus,” one says in black spray paint.
Police asked for information from residents, but few Sunday were willing to talk about the event. Activists said the public’s reluctance to share information is making the crime problem worse.
A 27-year-old woman who lives in the neighborhood but did not want to be named out of fear for her safety and that of her 8-year-old son, said Friday’s shooting made her feel “sick to her stomach.”
“My son could have been out here,” she said. “It could have been anybody’s kid.”
Trantham, who spent part of Sunday talking to people near the scene of the shooting, said people don’t feel safe enough to share what they know. He pointed out that there was no visible police presence even so soon after another barrage of gunfire.
“You see not one police car in this vicinity, even after this,” he said. “And you wonder why people won’t say anything. They don’t feel protected by the police.”
He wants to see a more constant presence of officers and patrol cars at hot spots such as Knox Place and Green Street SE, where three teenage girls were wounded by gunfire earlier this month.
The little girl’s shooting was at least the third time a juvenile was struck by gunfire in the District in recent weeks.
A 6-year-old boy was shot twice in the arm Wednesday night in Northeast, near the Prince George’s County line, after police said two people forced open the front door of his apartment and fired shots. Police said the incident was related to a neighbor dispute.A 6-year-old boy was shot twice in the arm Wednesday night in Northeast, near the Prince George’s County line, after police said two people forced open the front door of his apartment and fired shots. Police said the incident was related to a neighbor dispute.
On March 26, 15-year-old Davonte Washington was fatally shot while he waited for a train on the platform of the Deanwood Metro station in Northeast. Police said Washington was on his way to get a haircut for Easter with his mother and two younger sisters when another teen approached him. On March 26, 15-year-old Davonte Washington was fatally shot while he waited for a train on the platform of the Deanwood Metro station in Northeast. Police said he was on his way to get a haircut for Easter with his mother and two younger sisters when another teen approached him.
Maurice Bellamy, 17, of Southeast, was charged as an adult with second-degree murder while armed. Police said Bellamy and Washington didn’t know each other, but that the two exchanged words before Bellamy shot Washington in the chest. Friday night’s shooting occurred just a few hundred feet from a police station.
Friday’s night’s shooting — only a few hundred feet away from a police station — rattled some neighbors, who described the area as troubled. Diamond Jackson, 23, who was walking along Knox Place on Sunday, said the recent violence has gotten so bad that she no longer feels safe having her 6-year-old son play outside. “I don’t even want him sitting outside on the porch,” she said. “Bullets don’t have names on them. Anybody can get hit anytime, anywhere.”
“It is a living hell over there,” said Advisory Neighborhood Commission member Betty Scioppo, who lives nearby. She said the street where the shooting occurred has long been plagued by drugs and violence. “It’s right here by the police station, but there’s not enough manpower here to stop all this crime. It’s sad.” Angie Card, 48, is the treasurer of the tenants’ association at Hanover Courts. “I never feel safe around here,” she said. Card said crews from different neighborhoods are always targeting one another in the area around her apartment. “It’s called the hood war,” she said.
Anthony Muhammad, a member of the police department’s Citizens Advisory Council, said he went to the girl’s apartment building Saturday morning, but no one could tell him anything about the shooting. She, along with other residents of the apartment complex where the girl was shot are trying to raise money for her and her family. So far they have raised $62.
“No one wants to say anything,” Muhammad said. “It’s almost like a ghost town.” Peter Hermann contributed to this report.
He said police had taken cameras from her apartment building, presumably to check for video footage of the incident.
Muhammad said it was one of more than a handful of shootings over the past two months. The fact that the violence involved a child has left people angry.
“People are shocked, angry, upset,” Muhammad said. “This is outrageous. It doesn’t make sense.”
Asked why neighbors didn’t seem to want to talk about the shooting, Muhammad said, “It’s like people have become numb” to the violence in the area.
Muhammad said he can see the 7th District police station from the shooting scene.
“It’s ridiculous,” Muhammad said.
Police on Saturday offered a $10,000 reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of a suspect on what they said was a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
Alice Crites and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.