Bridgeport Mayor Enraged By Crossfire Shooting Of 3-Year-Old
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (CBSNewYork/AP) - The mayor of Bridgeport is outraged after 3-year-old girl was wounded in a shooting, WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau reported.
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The little girl was shot in the buttocks just before 5:30 p.m. Monday.
Police said she was caught in the crossfire as rival gangs shot their way out of a corner grocery store.
She was being treated at Yale-New Haven Hospital on Tuesday. Her exact condition was not released.
Mayor Bill Finch expressed his outrage, saying the shooting has surely ravaged the child's sense of security.
"People say 'Oh well. She's going to live.' But what about the trauma? You're walking with your mother, who you are expecting to protect you, and bullets begin to fly in your own neighborhood, near your own school, leaving a small corner grocery store," Finch told Schneidau.
Finch said stopping the flow of illegal guns has always been a priority.
"That's why, years ago, I joined Mike Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns because it is going to end up on my streets in my city," Finch said.
The Connecticut Post reported that a man involved in the shooting was taken to Bridgeport Hospital with gunshot wounds.
Police and witnesses told the Post that the girl and her mother were waiting hand-in-hand to cross at the corner of Maplewood Avenue and Poplar Street.
That's when shots were fired from a car at two men running down the street.
A neighbor, Jose Sanchez Sr., said he heard the gunfire from his upstairs apartment and ran to the street with his 18-year-old son, Jose Sanchez Jr.
Jose Sanchez Sr. said he saw the girl lying in the street.
"She was amazingly calm, but her mother was hysterical, screaming and crying,'' he told the Post.
Jose Sanchez Jr. said he tried to help her until medics arrived.
"She was lying there and bleeding a lot, and somebody yelled for something to stop the bleeding, and I just took off my shirt and pressed it against the wound,'' he told the newspaper.
Police said they are looking for a late model gray sedan with four people inside who are believed to have been involved.
Do we need more gun laws and restrictions or just better enforecement of the ones already on the books? Sound off in the comments section below.
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