Posted on 07/22/2011 6:37:32 PM PDT by mdittmar
YAKIMA, Wash. -- A 6-year-old girl critically injured in a drive-by shooting Wednesday night was struck twice by gunfire, the latest in a string of Yakima shootings that have claimed innocent victims.
Neighbors identified the girl as Sitlaly Calva-Acevedo and said they had been told she was hit twice in the chest or abdomen when a gunman opened fire on a group of adults and children in the front yard of her home at 905 N. Third St.
The shooting occurred at about 10 p.m. Wednesday. The girl’s home is across the street from Barge-Lincoln Elementary School. No arrests have been made yet.
"I was doing the dishes with my mom and getting ready for bed when we heard the gunshots, which sounded more like fireworks," a 16-year-old neighbor said Thursday. "Then we heard the little girl screaming."
Yakima Detective Sgt. Mike Pollard confirmed the girl was shot twice, though he did not specify where. She was listed in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.
Pollard said detectives hope "someone with a conscience, someone who knows what happened and who did it" will step forward with information.
"I really have some faith in that, given that this was a little 6-year-old girl who wasn’t doing anything that she shouldn’t have been doing.
"A child that young, it’s troubling for everybody."
The shooting was the latest outrage in Yakima’s long battle with street gangs, which seemed to take a turn for the worse following a spate of shootings that struck innocent victims starting in 2009.
Among the more recent examples:
• Teacher’s aide Yecenia Guerrero was fatally shot June 12 in the parking lot of the downtown Taco Bell on East Yakima Avenue. Detectives said Guerrero was the victim of mistaken identity, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Idaho resident Kyle Flerchinger, 20, was fatally struck in the head by a stray bullet on March 30, 2010, after he stepped outside a friend’s home on North Naches Avenue for a cigarette.
• A 23-year-old Michigan woman visiting her grandmother in the 1300 block of Roosevelt Avenue was struck in the leg by a stray bullet June 7, 2009 during a gang fight next door. A week earlier and two blocks away, a 13-year-old girl was hit in the abdomen when bullets were fired into her home.
Pollard said detectives have yet to discern a motive behind Wednesday night’s shooting.
He said a silver mid-sized sedan simply pulled up to the girl’s home and one of the occupants opened fire without saying a word. Three bullet holes marked with small bits of crime-scene tape were clearly visible on the exterior of the neatly kept home Thursday morning.
"Nothing to indicate that there was any words exchanged, just a random senseless act," Pollard said.
The car appeared to be occupied by as many as four males, Pollard said, adding detectives were studying footage from video that was recovered. He declined to be more specific about the video.
The 16-year-old who lives next to the scene of the shooting said the girl’s family was having a get-together Wednesday night and was listening to music when the attack occurred.
She said no adult males lived at the home, only a 13-year-old boy who wasn’t home at the time of the shooting. She was not sure who was visiting.
"They’re not gang-related. They don’t have any problems. Happy family," she said of the girl’s family.
But next-door neighbor Beri Carter, who has lived in the working class neighborhood for 35 years, said the home was the scene of much "coming and going" involving teenagers. She said she didn’t know the family.
"You have to wonder what a 6-year-old is doing up at that hour," said Carter, who, along with her husband, George, raised four boys in the neighborhood.
Carter said she and her husband still feel safe in the neighborhood but have seen changes over the years as gangs have taken hold.
"I think these people don’t value life at all," she said. "To shoot at a family, that’s just insane."
Said Pollard, "We don’t have a lot of problems up there, but we do have a population of gang members in that area. There you have it."
Dark complexion, 5’10-6’2. Wearing a baseball cap...
Impossible shooting: possession of a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school is against the law.
Don’t you feel comforted that illegal aliens are spreading their ‘wonderful’ culture across the fruited plains?
“• Idaho resident Kyle Flerchinger, 20, was fatally struck in the head by a stray bullet on March 30, 2010, after he stepped outside a friend’s home on North Naches Avenue for a cigarette.”
Everybody knows that smoking can be fatal.>s
Even 20 years ago, we warned, if we wanted to stretch out and walk to a restaurant, that there were some parts of Yakima that were totally unsafe. It is true we walked past empty lots filled with beer cans, bottles, other such trash, but did not run into trouble.
There is, though, a huge migrant population that come for the fruit harvests, many illegal, many not planning to work harvest at all.
In general, it is the better side of the state but Yakima is an exception.
It’s amazing how a 6-year old child can be struck twice with bullets and (so far) survive the trauma. Hope the kid makes it. Prayers up!
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