A teenage girl and her five-year-old brother were caught in the crossfire between gang members shooting at each other as the kids were out trick-or-treating in Philadelphia on Halloween evening, a report says.
Makiya Williams, 14, was escorting her five-year-old brother, Mael, out trick-or-treating at around 6:15 p.m. on Halloween in the city’s Olney neighborhood when two men, apparently from opposing gangs, began shooting at each other on the street catching the kids in between the combatants, NBC 10 reported.
Little Mael took a bullet in his left leg, and his big sister was grazed by a bullet also in her leg. Bullets also smashed through the glass of a bedroom window of a nearby home. No one was in the room at the time.
“I was just focused on getting him to safety to make sure he was alright,” the 14-year-old Williams said.
But she also had a message for the shooters: “Do better man. It was in broad daylight!”
“Gun violence is ridiculous,” said Dominique Wise, the mother of the children. “It makes no sense to send your children out to go trick-or-treating, and then you get a phone call that not one but two of your children were shot.”
Police have released a description of the shooters, but otherwise, they have no leads or any particular suspect in mind.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.