When someone in a car opened fire on a Northeast D.C. street Monday evening and shot a 3-year-old boy, a good Samaritan jumped into action.
The woman saw the little boy doubled over in pain, so she scooped him up and raced him to a hospital, she told News4.
"I noticed that everyone else around me was trying to find their loved ones, panicking, and no one was really reaching for a phone to call 911, and it was already a minute that went past. And a minute was too long to see that much blood come from a little boy," she said. "So I just said, 'Put him in the car. I can take him myself.'"
The woman asked News4 not to reveal her identity.
A number of people, including several children, were on 18th Place NE near Bladensburg Road about 5 p.m. Monday when someone in a red Jeep opened fire on the block.
The 3-year-old and a man were shot and wounded.
At first, the man didn't know he had been hit, a witness said. The man was rushing into a building when someone told him he had been hit in the buttocks.
As the woman rushed the little boy to a hospital, she was afraid he would die, she said. He couldn't speak.
"He was gasping for air. When we got probably close to Florida Avenue, we all thought we was about to lose him because he kept choking," she said. "That's when we started to look to see if he was hit anywhere else other than his hand, and then we found out when we lifted his shirt up that he had got hit in the stomach. That's when it really was scary."
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A short time after the shooting, police arrested one man. At least two others are still sought.
Kenneth Warren Morris III, of Capitol Heights, was arrested and charged with assault with intent to kill. Court documents suggest other men were in the vehicle with him. Three guns were used in the shooting, the documents say.
The men fled the scene of the crime and abandoned the Jeep in the parking lot of Eddie's Carry Out on Bladensburg Road, the documents say. Then, they scattered. Video viewed by police shows three men running toward a Valero gas station nearby.
One suspect, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and ripped jeans, headed north on Bladensburg Road and was not seen again.
Morris went inside the Valero, the documents say. A witness said he approached them and offered all of his money to drive him somewhere, but the witness said they could not. Then, Morris allegedly tossed a black ski mask in a trash can and walked away from the store.
The witness pointed officers in Morris' direction.
It's not clear where police found Morris. When they did speak with him, he said he had been at a nearby Denny's at the time of the shooting.
Police found the Jeep in the Eddie's Carry Out parking lot with a blown-out tire. Inside the vehicle, police found a black ski mask and ammunition.
A gun was recovered near the Valero.
On Tuesday, as the 3-year-old boy and the man who were shot were recovering, city officials said they hoped the shooting was not a sign of things to come this summer.
"We're focused on illegal guns. I think you know that I support enhanced enforcement around our schools and recreation centers," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference on the city's summer crime initiative.
Around the same time and in the same area, a man was shot and wounded near the Deanwood Recreation Center on 49th Street NE.
