CINCINNATI — A 12-year-old girl shot Tuesday night spent Wednesday afternoon recovering from emergency surgery in the ICU at Children’s Hospital.
Her mother, too distraught to give a full interview, said she had been sitting on the second floor of a Hawthorne Avenue apartment building when the bullet punched through the window from outside.
The 12-year-old was not the intended target, Capt. Doug Snider said the night of the shooting.
She was hit in the back anyway.
“Knowing a child that young was injured, this kind of an incident is devastating to anybody who is working to make their community a better place to live,” said Sheila Rosenthal, an East Price Hill community advocate.
Later examination of the scene showed the shooter, who remained at large Wednesday night, fired multiple times into the building from the street outside. Police said they believed the shooter had been trying to hit one of the adults who lived there.
“Whatever mess is going on, it’s not involving the kids,” said James Casey, who was downstairs at the time of the attack. “That’s separate.”
The victim of Tuesday’s shooting was the second young bystander injured by a Price Hill shooting in under three months.
Another young girl — this one 11 years old — had been playing outside on Christmas day when a stray bullet from a nearby gunfight hit her.
Rosenthal said she and other community leaders believed violence of this kind could be preventable if the city of Cincinnati funds more programming for children to keep them off the streets and away from violence.
“The community of East Price Hill hopes that this young lady will be well and whole again soon, and we’re very upset that she’s having to go through this,” she said.
