A 6-year-old girl and her parents were injured by gunfire on Tuesday night after a basketball rolled down a residential street in North Carolina and into a man’s yard, enraging him, neighbors told WSOC-TV.
Witnesses told the station that the gunman ran up and down the street, firing until he ran out of bullets.
The Gaston County Police Department said Wednesday they were still hunting for the alleged gunman, identified as Robert Louis Singletary, a 24-year-old man described as “armed and dangerous.”
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The young girl, Kinsley White, was hospitalized after being seriously wounded. She was released overnight, family members told Queen City News. Her father, William White, remains in the hospital.
“He came out with a gun, he started shooting,” Kinsley explained to the outlet. “Hope my daddy is OK.”
Her mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, was grazed by a bullet and treated at the scene. She told WSOC that she heard the gunman make a threat to her husband and daughter: “I’m going to kill you.”
He then chased them, firing, while William White tried to shield Kinsley, Hilderbrand said.
A fourth person was shot at but not injured, police said.
Singletary faces multiple charges, including four counts of first-degree attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.
In December, he was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend with what police described as a “mini sledgehammer.” He allegedly prevented her from leaving his apartment until she cleaned up the evidence of the assault. The woman was able to escape roughly two hours later.
Neighbors told WSOC that Singletary was new to the area and often got angry with children in the neighborhood.
Citing the ongoing investigation, a spokesperson for the Gaston County Police Department declined to confirm details of the case.
“I want to say to the people of Gaston County—this sort of violence will not stand,” Stephen Zill, the department’s chief, said in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday afternoon.
Police have partnered with the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force to find Singletary, Zill said.
“We don’t even know the man,” Kinsley told WSOC, appearing on camera with stitches in her cheek. “Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid’s dad?”
The incident followed a recent spate of high-profile shootings involving young victims. On Monday, a 25-year-old man in Texas was arrested for shooting at a group of four high school cheerleaders after one of them mistakenly tried to get into his car, thinking it was hers.
Over the weekend, Kaylin Gillis, a 20-year-old woman, was killed in upstate New York after the car she was in pulled up the wrong driveway while searching for a friend’s house. A 65-year-old man was charged with one count of second-degree murder.
And last Thursday, a teenage honors student named Ralph Yarl was shot twice by an 84-year-old man after accidentally ringing the doorbell of the wrong house while trying to pick his younger brothers up in a Missouri neighborhood. Yarl was discharged from the hospital this week.
