Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130473
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK/ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last November, the 3-year-old's father was shot to death outside a house on 13th Street Northwest during an argument.
And Thursday night, after riding the merry-go-round at Melrose Park until it was time to go home with her mother, Reticia - caught in the crossfire of a gunfight - was shot in the leg.
"It's real bad, because she was already dealing with him [her father] being shot," her mother, LaTasha, said from Community Hospital, where Reticia was listed in stable condition Friday.
"She understands, even though she's just 3 years old," Washington said. "Her getting shot in the leg is just putting the icing on the cake. That's why it's so upsetting to her."
Reticia may understand what happened, but it is beyond the 3-year-old, or her 20-year-old mother, to fathom why it happened; why playing in a city park carries the risk of getting shot.
"I'm still in shock," Washington said. "I can't believe that people can go to the public place like a park, be sitting and talking, and all of a sudden someone opens fire."
It was the second time in two months that a child was wounded by stray gunfire in Roanoke.
City police said Friday that Reticia was hit in her upper right thigh by a stray bullet from a gunfight between at least two people at the park, on the 1500 block of Melrose Avenue Northwest.
No arrests have been made, although detectives spent Friday trying to locate the driver of a car that police say may have been an intended target in a volley of gunfire.
Washington said she drove her daughter to Melrose Park Thursday night because there are no playgrounds at the Lansdowne housing project, where she lives. Her friend, Michelle Hancock, came along with her 8-month-old child.
As it got dark, she let her daughter continue to play in the light cast from nearby basketball courts. Shortly before 9 p.m., an argument broke out on the court, she said.
"There were some words back and forth," she said. One man said something about getting a gun.
That's when Washington decided it was time to go home. "I said `Let's go, before something happens,'" she said.
But as Washington and her daughter walked to her car parked on nearby 15th Street, gunfire erupted - sending the 30-some people in the park scrambling for cover.
"Everybody was running and ducking," she said. "You couldn't see who was shooting, but you could see the fire coming out of the guns."
She estimates that it was about a dozen shots; not the rapid popping of semi-automatic weapons, but the "pow, pow" of revolvers.
Police said shots apparently were exchanged between someone at the top of a hill in the park and someone in the lower area, near the basketball courts.
Reticia was standing about five feet in front of the left headlight of the car that was being shot at, her mother said. On the other side of the car, Hancock dove to the pavement, clutching her 8-month-old child to her chest. They were not injured.
At first, Washington did not know Reticia had been shot. "After she got shot, she was still standing, and had the nerve to walk to the car. She was calm."
It was only as she sped away that Washington looked over to the passenger's seat and saw that her daughter was bleeding from her leg. Changing directions, she headed for Community Hospital.
Although Reticia seemed to be recovering well Friday, her mother said the shooting has only deepened her psychological wounds from last Nov. 16.
That was when her father, William G. Copeland, 31, was shot to death after he wielded a baseball bat at a 17-year-old during an argument in front of his sister's home. Marlon J. Johnson was charged with murder and faces a trial later this month.
Reticia is not the only Roanoke preschooler to be wounded by stray gunfire recently. In February, Moneka Small, 4, was grazed in the face by a bullet as she ran for safety after a daytime gunfight broke out near the Hurt Park housing project. She was walking with her mother and 3-year-old brother.
Judge Thomas, 33, a former high school football star, and a 17-year-old boy have been charged with malicious wounding in that shooting.
Authorities have said that the 17-year-old charged in that gunfight was also involved in a shooting last year at the Lincoln Terrace housing project in which a 13-year-old boy was hit by a stray bullet.
In all three shootings, children have been unlucky enough to be near arguments that did not involve them.
"I don't know what was going on," Washington said. "I just know that my daughter got caught in the middle of it."
by CNB