WASHINGTON — A 5-year-old boy was shot in Southeast Friday afternoon, DC Police confirmed.
The shooting happened in the 1300 block of Congress Street Southeast around 4:24 p.m., officers said. DC Police Chief Peter Newhsam said the incident appears to be a street robbery gone wrong.
A mother and her 5-year-old son were walking to the grocery store when the intended victims of a robbery fled and one of the robbers fired a gun multiple times. The child was hit in the stomach by a bullet. He has been taken to a hospital and is in stable condition.
MPD is looking for two to three suspects, but Newsham said that given multiple witness accounts, they don't have a solid description yet. The robbers appeared to be somewhere in the late teen and early 20s age range.
Newsham called the crime "brazen" and said the gunmen "didn't appear to have much concern for life."
"We gotta do something about these guys who feel it's ok to indiscriminately fire guns in our community," Newsham said. "A mother and her 5-year-old son ought to be able to walk to the grocery store without having to take her son to the hospital for a gunshot wound. I think we all agree on that."
One man who lives near the intersection where the shooting occurred said he ran over to help the boy moments after the crime.
"He was running around and the mother was trying to hold him down," the neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, said. "I told the mother to lay the little boy down and put her hands over the wounds. I was trying to keep him calm by talking to him and keep him relaxed.”
After seeing the boy get rushed to the hospital, the neighbor hoped he would make a full recovery.
"I hope he does make it," the man said. "Having to live with those wounds, he’s probably going to have some big problems.”
Other neighbors who spoke to WUSA9 described frequently feeling unsafe in the neighborhood.
Denise Smith, who has lived in the community for four decades, said the senseless crime on Friday joined a long list of violent incidents in the area over the years.
"It’s a shame you can’t even walk down the street, you can’t even stand in front of your house without getting shot," she said. "What else can I do? Am I supposed to just stay in the house and not go anywhere?”
Roads were blocked off between Congress Street Southeast and Alabama Avenue and Savannah Street through 6 p.m. Police encouraged alternative routes, like Wheeler Road, Mississippi Avenue and Stanton Road.
On Thursday, an 8-year-old girl was struck by a stray bullet in Southeast. The shooting happened just before 9 p.m. in the 2700 block of Bruce Place Southeast, near a playground by the Woodland Terrace apartment complex.
Authorities said the injuries sustained by the girl were "non-life-threatening" and that she was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
That same day, an arrest was made in connection with the death of 10-year-old Makiyah Wilson, who was killed while eating ice cream on her front stoop in July 2018. She was sitting in front of her home with her sister in Clay Terrace when a group of men sprayed more than 70 gunshots into a crowd of people.
U.S. Marshals arrested D.C. fugitive Isaiah Murchison, one of 11 people indicted in the murder, at a residence in Fredericksburg, Virginia, around 8:15 p.m. Thursday.