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Driver shoots two children for throwing snowballs at car

Getty Images
Getty Images

A driver fired at least five rounds at a group of children who were throwing snowballs in a Wisconsin neighbourhood after one of them hit a passing vehicle.

According to the Milwaukee Police Department, officers responded to reports of a shooting in a residential area of the city around 8pm on 4 January to discover a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy suffering from "non-life threatening" gunshot wounds.

One of the snowballs struck a white Toyota, according to police, and the driver "fired shots into the group of kids striking the two victims."

The girl was shot twice, and the boy was shot once. Both children are being treated at a local hospital. The driver fired off as many as five rounds at the children, according to neighbours who heard the shots.

Police said that a "preliminary investigation indicates both victims were with a group of juveniles throwing snowballs at cars" that passed through the neighbourhood.

No arrests have been made, though police are combing through the neighbourhood's home surveillance footage that may have captured the shooting, according to Milwaukee ABC affiliate WISN.

One resident, Ravell Davis, told WISN that he made his family, including his wife and six children, get on the floor of their kitchen when he heard the sound of gunshots down the street.

He said: "It's getting bad. You know, it's ridiculous when you look outside and the front and side of your house is taped off. It's getting real crazy now."

Last February, a woman in Seattle was arrested for allegedly attempting to run over a group of people playing with snowballs after one hit her Jeep, according to the Washington Post.

In 2008, a teenager in Philadelphia was shot in the head after hitting a passing adult in the face with a snowball, and in 2009, a detective in Washington, DC pulled out his gun to threaten a group of people who hit his car with snowballs.

Police in Milwaukee counted 98 murders in 2019. More than 80 per cent of murders in the city over the last six years were the result of gunshots.

Milwaukee Alderman Cavalier Johnson pointed to the recent shooting to urge state officials to strengthen the state's gun laws.

He told CBS affiliate WDJT: "I'm asking for the people who control the legislature to do something about this so we don't have situations like this in our city or anywhere in Wisconsin.