Another Brooklyn Playground Shooting
Four teenagers were shot Monday evening on the basketball court of the Fish Playground in Brownsville. Police say that the shooter was a teenager on a bicycle who approached the group of kids and opened fire before riding off.
ABC News reported on the shooting and notes that “people in the neighborhood are outraged by the violence.” Douglas Wright, a father and neighborhood resident, said “Our own kids can’t go and play basketball in the park. Can’t have fun, enjoy your kid life. Can’t be a kid no more.”
This latest incident follows several other times this summer when city youths have been the victims of gun violence, including the fatal shooting of a 4-year-old in the Bronx and the shooting of a 2-year-old and 13-year-old who were also in Brownsville. Community leader and anti-violence activist Geoffrey Davis told ABC News, “It’s not a way of life. So we’re extremely outraged and at the same time hurt. They’re taking innocent lives, and they’re hurting innocent people, and this stuff has got to stop. And we’ve got to get mad enough, get everybody out here to get angry enough to say we want this to stop and we want it to stop now, and do something about it.”
All four victims were hospitalized but are expected to make a full recovery. Motivation for the shooting remains unknown.
And if you want to read something else about the difficulties that kids today are faced with, check out this piece in today’s New York Times, where they expose the trials of a different group of teenagers. These kids are also having hard summers. They’re faced with long days of $400/hour SAT tutors coming to their Hamptons homes. Even the parents are concerned about the torture that their studious kids are enduring. “Summers should be for fun,” one mother says.
I totally agree.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen
