LITTLE GIRL GETS SHOT
Gunman bursts into Bronx apt.
A gunman barged into a Bronx apartment and opened fire Wednesday morning, wounding an 8-year-old girl in the stomach, officials said.
The child was inside her family’s 11th-floor apartment at NYCHA’s Patterson Houses on E. 143rd St. near Third Ave. in Mott Haven when the shooter kicked open the front door and fired off one round about 9:10 a.m., her mom, 26, told police.
The girl was hit in the stomach. The mom took her to Lincoln Hospital, where she is in serious condition but is expected to survive, officials said.
Hospital workers called police when they realized they had a gunshot victim on their hands, Assistant Chief David Barrere, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Housing Bureau, said at the scene of the shooting.
Cops Wednesday converged on the apartment looking for ballistic evidence and surveillance footage to help them identify the shooter. “This is an ongoing investigation,” Barrere said. “Detectives are processing the crime scene, interviewing witnesses and checking for video. We have no indication on motive at all right now.”
The child was in the apartment with her mother and a man when the gunman barged in, Barrere said. It was not immediately clear why the mom didn’t call 911 immediately.
The apartment door was unlocked when the gunman stepped in and opened fire, she told police. Building residents said they didn’t know a shooting had occurred until police arrived.
“I just heard one pop this morning and then I went back to sleep. I didn’t think anything of it,” said Derek Ross, who lives on the ninth floor. “It was a little girl? That’s horrible. That’s just crazy.”
A neighbor who knows the child’s family doesn’t believe the mom or the girl could have been targets. “I know the [mom],” said the elderly neighbor, who was seated outside the building in a wheelchair, breathing with the help of an oxygen tank. “She’s a good person.”
Police said this is the second Patterson Houses shooting this year..