NBC 5’s Larry Collins tells us how the child’s mother helped victims of the shooting that left six people injured, including four children.
Harrowing footage shows the moments when bullets came through the wall and flew past a 9-year-old boy during a drive-by shooting at a Fort Worth apartment complex in early May.
Six people were wounded in a drive-by shooting outside the Miramar apartments near 3000 Las Vegas Trail in Fort Worth. Four of the victims were children.
The mother of the boy caught on camera ducking from the bullets in his home says he’s living in constant fear of being caught up in another shooting, and they’re trying to leave the area because of their safety concerns.
Home security camera footage provided to NBC 5 showed 9-year-old Errol Hill sitting down on his couch before dinner two weeks ago.
Get top local stories in Philly delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC Philadelphia's News Headlines newsletter.
Then came chaos: bullets could be seen spraying into the living room from the street, sending a cloud of dust over the boy’s head as he ducked for safety.
“It came through the wall,” Hill told NBC 5. “I thought it was just fireworks, but when I heard the screams, I looked outside.”
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
When the shooting finally stopped, Hill ran for his mother, Mary Jane Gonzales.
“So I made sure he was fine, came out here to see where exactly they shot, and as I was out here, I heard all the families downstairs yelling,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales ran outside, finding that six people had been shot.
A medical assistant, Gonzales tried to stop the bleeding of multiple victims, one of whom was just 3.
“That one was really hard for me,” Gonzales said. “Seeing her going in and out of consciousness.”
First responders arrived and took the victims to safety. As police continued their search for the shooter, Gonzales said her family has still been reliving the violence.
“It forever changed our life. We are traumatized,” Gonzales said. “I’ve never seen anyone get shot, let alone a child.”
“I’ve never had to experience that,” she continued.
The family signed a new lease in the Miramar apartments weeks before the shooting, but Gonzales has been trying to move elsewhere, no longer believing the Las Vegas Trail area was safe for her three children.
The mother set up a GoFundMe and is asking the community to help her family move on from this incident.
“Just somewhere safer, somewhere that my kids can go outside and play,” Gonzales said. “Because they can’t go outside and play without having to worry if they’re going to get shot, are we the next victim on Las Vegas Trail?”
The Fort Worth Police Department told NBC 5 they continued to search for the suspects behind the shooting.
If anyone has any information about the shooting, they should contact the Fort Worth Police Department at 817-392-4222. Tipsters may remain anonymous.
