Family caught in middle of shooting in Marshall-Shadeland
Shataiya Troutman had just put her 5-month-old daughter, Bella, into a minivan outside her family’s house on Woodland Avenue in Marshall-Shadeland when two men walked past her about 10 a.m. Thursday.
Seconds later, another man appeared about a block down the street. He fired several shots at the men who had just walked past, she said.
Ms. Troutman ducked behind the passenger-side door. Her sister and baby were sitting in the minivan, which was hit by at least four bullets. They were lucky, she says, that no one was injured.
“It was loud and it was scary,” said Ms. Troutman, 20. “He could have shot through the window and the seat and my baby would have been hit.”
One bullet hit each side-view mirror. Another cracked the windshield. Yet another dented the hood.
Police described the shooter as a light-skinned black man of medium build with a mustache. He was wearing a gray hoodie and black or blue pants.
It was the second shooting in less than a week in the 1100 block of Woodland Avenue. On Saturday, a man was shot several times and taken to Allegheny General Hospital in critical condition, police said.
“This has got to go,” said Crystal Dean, 62, Ms. Troutman’s grandmother. “This is young boys feuding. I mean, how do you stand up there and shoot down here — and you see people here — even if you’re aiming at people on the other side?”
Ms. Dean said the family had been living in fear.
“Since the shootings [began], we’ve been running in the house, me and the grandkids,” she said. “We stop on the corner, get [our stuff ] all together, get [our] bookbags because we can’t diddle-daddle in front of our house. But I’m thinking after school, after dark. [This is] 10 o’clock this morning. Broad daylight.”