Five shootings in the District over the weekend left one man dead and six people hurt, among them two children. One was 14 years old and the other was 12.
Both of the children are expected to survive, and are believed to have shot themselves accidentally, authorities said.
The 14-year-old shot himself on Saturday in the 1200 block of 47th Street NE, D.C. police said. In the courtyard of the Paradise at Parkside apartment complex on Jay Street NE, where the 12-year-old shot himself on Sunday, resident Olivia Felder said she was moving out.
She said she has never seen the violence this bad in the 22 years she’s lived there.
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“I can’t take it no more. I can’t take it. It’s every day, it’s all day. I can’t take it,” Felder cried out.
She has dropped to the floor of her apartment more times than she can count when gunfire rings out in the complex, she said.
“It’s worse than tough. I hear a gun and I am out of my bed and on the concrete floor. It’s any time of day, any time of day, it doesn’t matter,” Felder added.
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Police spent several hours investigating the shooting of the 12-year-old. While at first investigators thought someone shot him in the abdomen inside an apartment, later they discovered he shot himself outside in the common area.
A law enforcement source told News4 someone took the gun and left the scene.
On Saturday on the other side of the complex on Hayes Street, two men were shot. One did not survive. Earlier that day, two others were shot in the 1500 block of Alabama Avenue SE. The last shooting on Sunday, on the 3200 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, also left a man hurt.
“Bullets can come through those windows and the kids or whatever, the teenagers have taken over. I pray every time,” Felder said.
She added that she has been living like a hermit out of fear. Now, she has found a new place to live in a senior community and is moving out.
A suspect in the shooting on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE was “stopped,” according to police. In the others, there have been no arrests.
