The last of the banalities that deserves an armed response is the bounce of a ball that falls in someone else’s garden. Little is needed in the United States to take up arms.
Robert Louis Singletary, 24, is already in custody. He opened fire on a six-year-old girl and her parents after a basketball some boys were playing with fell in Singletary’s garden and the neighboring family tried to retrieve it.
The gunman turned himself in in Tampa, Florida, after a couple of days of searching.
“I tell the citizens of Gaston County that we are not going to tolerate this type of violence,†said Stephen Zill, chief of the police department for that North Carolina territory.
This incident adds to a week that has perplexed Americans, despite being more than accustomed to gun and rifle violence, something they experience on a daily basis anywhere. No site is safe.
But rarely has a state of opinion been created like the one that has arisen after the death of a 20-year-old girl who lost her way and the owner of a house responded with a deadly projectile, the teenager who received a couple of bullets, from which he recovers, when he got the wrong bell when knocking on the door of a house or the two cheerleaders injured when they confused their cars in the parking lot of a supermarket.
In this new installment, the Gastonia emergency services received a call informing them that a man was shooting in one of the southern neighborhoods of the city, police reported.
Jamie White, who went to help his daughter retrieve the ball, was shot in the back and remained hospitalized with significant injuries. The girl, Kinsley White, suffered a bullet wound to her left cheek. She was cured and she returned to her house, with the mark of this madness more than visible on her face. Her mother, Ashley Hildebrand, also sustained a gunshot wound to the elbow, and she too received treatment and returned to her home.
Police reported that Singletary fired at another neighbor but missed.
According to a local television station, several children were playing basketball when the ball rolled down the street and into the garden of a house. The man who was in that house was enraged by the intrusion and started shooting.
Singletary repeatedly yelled at the children before going outside, other neighbors said. He then he went back inside and came out armed and threatened. “Anyone who sees you coming, I’ll shoot”, always based on these testimonies. And he fired.
Once in custody, the alleged gunman was charged with four counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a weapon and intent to kill, and one count of possession of a weapon.
Shots and more shots, and prayers to entrust himself to God. This is the never ending true story of America.
