To a group of kids whose ball rolled into a neighbor’s yard, it probably seemed like an innocent affair to come over and pick it up.
Little did they know it would escalate into the latest example of the speed of armed Americans to pull the trigger in seemingly mundane circumstances.
Because not only did their neighbor Robert Singletary, 24, yell at them, he entered his home and emerged with a gun before reportedly firing wildly at residents who arrived on the scene Tuesday in Gaston County, North Carolina.
Six-year-old Kinsley White was scraped by a bullet in her cheek and her mother, Ashley, suffered a minor wound to her elbow. But her father William suffered serious injuries when he was shot in the back.
“We don’t know the man,” Kinsley said. “Why did you shoot my father and me? Why did you shoot a child’s father?’
Six-year-old Kinsley White was grazed by a bullet in her cheek after a ball rolled into a neighbor’s yard
Payton Washington was shot and her friend injured after accidentally getting into the wrong car on her way home from training in Texas
It was the fourth in a series of similar senseless incidents in the US in just five days.
Together they show how the country’s never-ending nightmare of gun violence is marked not only by the horrific massacres that make headlines, but also by the much more common day-to-day calamities where the most innocent mistakes or misunderstandings are met with deadly force.
The US is the only country in the world where there are more civilian-owned guns than civilians — 120.5 firearms per 100 people, with about 44 percent of US adults living in a household with a gun.
Ralph Yarl, a black 16-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, was the first victim of this latest series of mindless shootings. A little over a week ago, on April 13, he was sent by his mother around 10 p.m. to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend’s house.
But he mixed up the address and rang the doorbell at Andrew Lester, 84, who went to bed.
Hather Roth was injured after accidentally getting into the wrong car after training in Texas
Ralph Yarl, a black 16-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, was the first victim of this latest series of mindless shootings. A little over a week ago, on April 13, he was sent by his mother around 10 p.m. to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend’s house.
Lester showed up at his front door with his revolver and, according to Ralph, they didn’t exchange a word until he opened fire. The teen was punched first in the head and then in the arm before running away.
Lester claimed Ralph pulled the door handle thinking he was trying to break in, but the teen, who survived the shooting, insisted he didn’t.
Prosecutors who charged Lester with first-degree assault and armed criminal action have stressed that the victim did not “cross the threshold” to enter the home.
That detail is crucial to America’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” rules, a patchwork of state laws that give people significant freedom to use their guns against intruders in their homes, but not outside.
Such a distinction was irrelevant two days later when Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally shot after she and some friends accidentally drove into Kevin Monahan’s driveway in the New York town of Hebron while looking for the home of a friend.
Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally shot after she and some friends accidentally pulled into Kevin Monahan’s driveway in the New York town of Hebron while looking for a friend’s house
Police say no one got out of the group’s two cars and, after realizing their mistake, they turned to leave when two shots rang out. Miss Gillis, who was in the front passenger seat of the last vehicle to turn, was hit and later died in hospital.
Monahan, 65, who neighbors say had a reputation for being in a bad mood, was charged with manslaughter.
Three days later, four high school students were on their way home from cheerleading practice shortly after midnight when one of them, Heather Roth, accidentally got into the wrong car outside a grocery store in Elgin, Texas, thinking it belonged to a friend.
When she realized there was a man in the passenger seat she didn’t recognize, she quickly got out. After getting into the right car, she saw the man — identified by police as Pedro Rodriguez, 25 — approach and said she rolled down her window to apologise. Police say an argument ensued and the gunman fired half a dozen shots as the cheerleaders drove off.
Miss Roth was scraped by a bullet and treated at the scene, but another girl in the car, Payton Washington, 18, was hit in the back and leg and suffered serious injuries.
Rodriguez has been charged with lethal conduct.