With Time, Little Leaguers Will Understand Gunshots Just Sound Of Freedom
Only cars got bullet holes in them this time, so hooray America!
Dozens of gunshots interrupted a Dixie Youth League baseball game in North Charleston, South Carolina, Monday evening, with little kids and parents running for cover or throwing themselves to the ground as the sound of nearby gunfire rang out. The video, thank Crom, is not graphic because despite all the gunfire, no one was wounded. It's still terrifying to see, with confused kids running for cover, kids and adults crawling on the grass to stay low, and people calling for their children:
The shooting started around 8: 45; North Charleston Police later confirmed that nobody appears to have been injured. WCSC-TV reports that
A police report released Tuesday states witnesses told responding officers that a “large group” of teenagers pulled into the parking lot and began fistfighting. Witnesses then told officers the teenagers began shooting at each other before they fled in their vehicles where it appeared shots were fired from one vehicle towards another, the report states.
Police spokesperson Harve Jacobs said that the gunfire had no connection to the operations of the park or the several baseball games underway at the time, and pledged that police "will leave no stone unturned in bringing these suspects to justice." North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey announced Tuesday a $10,000 reward would be given for information leading to an arrest in the case. He added that the award was not contingent on a conviction, which we're reading as a not very subtle acknowledgement that witnesses might be reluctant to actually testify against teenaged hotheads with guns.
The parent who took the video, Blake Ferguson, told WCSC that his son was pitching when the shooting began, and estimated he heard between 50 and 75 shots coming from the park's parking lot.
Lori Ferguson said she heard the booms and initially thought someone was setting off fireworks.
“And then all of a sudden, boom, boom, and ‘Get down, everybody, get down!’ And you’re at a park. My kids are not with me directly and you just see everybody scattering,” she said. “And my son’s on the pitcher mound by himself and it was just the most traumatic thing as a mother, as a citizen of this city, that you just feel helpless. I felt completely helpless.”
The Fergusons said that several parents' cars in the parking lot had bullet holes in them; Lori Ferguson said that when police responded, they didn't come into the baseball field area to check on families or to help them leave safely. “But nobody ever came and checked like, ‘Hey, are these kids okay?’” she said.
She added that the gunfire had left her kids traumatized, and unwilling to even take a shower Monday night for fear of being alone.
As of yet, we have no word on which of the two armed groups of teens were the good guys with guns. It's entirely possible, we suppose, that nobody in the gun battle was actually a good guy, difficult though that is to imagine. Clearly, the only answer is to make sure more and more people are packing heat, so they can take on both sides and prevail.
The shooting near the baseball fields Monday came just a day after a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old died in a separate shooting in North Charleston early Sunday morning. No arrests or determinations of good-guy status have been made in that case.
In the meantime, if children in North Charleston would like to be less traumatized, maybe they should study real hard and become exchange students in a country like Australia, Japan, or the UK, where you can participate in sportsball with far less risk of having a gun battle break out nearby.
[ WCSC-TV / WCIV-TV / WCIV-TV ]
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