DETROIT – Detroit police are asking the public to help identify the suspects responsible for a drive-by shooting that injured a 7-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy who were asleep in a home on the city’s east side.
Police say two people in separate black trucks stopped and opened fire on the home on Arcola Street in what is believed to be a targeted shooting.
Neighbor Helen Starks woke up to the sound of gunshots and rushed outside to help the two injured children before police arrived.
“It was very, very hurtful to see those children, to see the frightening in their eyes and to see how their parents were worked up,” Starks said.
It comes days after 6-year-old Rylee Love was hit and killed by a stray bullet during a shootout near his family’s east side home.
Leaders of Detroit’s Community Violence Intervention groups have ramped up outreach during a summer marked by violence involving children and teens.
After the triple shooting at Skinner Playfield last month that killed 4-year-old Samir Grubbs, CVI groups launched “Protect the Zone”, a summer safety campaign aimed at engaging teens and preventing violence in neighborhoods, schools, and parks.
“We are at war, Detroit, and our children are the battleground and the target,” said pastor Maurice Hardwick, founder of the non-profit Live in Peace.
Live in Peace mentors teens in Detroit Public Schools and the Wayne County Juvenile Justice Center. Hardwick called for more funding from the state to support programs like his, which help meet teens where they are.
The organization is planning to hold a rally Friday to honor Rylee and call for an end to the violence. The event will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. at Joseph Campau Avenue Church, and speakers will include Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison as well as other CVI leaders.
“It’s time to call everybody,” Hardwick said. “Every pastor, every church, every organization, every business, entrepreneur, every philanthropist, it’s time to put some money and some fight behind this.”
Anyone with information on either shooting can call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK-UP or contact Detroit Police.
“Do the right thing here. Do it as if it was your child,” Hardwick said. “The people who did it, they need help. They cannot stay on the street with a hoodie on shooting A-Ks. They’re going to kill somebody else.”
“It has to stop, and the community needs to come together and put in a community effort to stop this,” Starks said. “These guns are not the way to go, it’s just not.”