Neighbors Speak Out On Shooting That Left 9 Year Old Dead, 16 Year Old Injured
Montgomery Police have charged an 11-year-old boy with reckless murder and assault in the shooting death of a nine-year-old boy and the wounding of a 16-year-old.
Many neighbors are still in shock and trying to understand what exactly happened Monday afternoon. After hearing screams across the street, Mary Colley says she was one of the first to arrive to this home just moments after her young neighbor was fatally shot.
She says  “it bothered me so bad to see him laying there and to know him because its senseless these children with these guns they don’t know how to handle them how are they getting them? They can’t be buying them,people don’t sell guns to 15 and 16 year old kids”.
Colley says her neighborhood was once quiet, but now she’s worried violence will become the norm. She doesn’t want other kids to have the same fate. That’s why she says she’s trying to reach out before its too late.
She explains “but that’s all I can do is talk to them, I can’t make them do anything but if they know that somebody is concerned maybe they’ll come and talk to somebody like me and tell me that they have problems”.
The city recently established a task force aimed at reducing violence among young people, but Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange says that it will take more than a few programs to reach those who need it most.
“we’re talking about people on the fringes, that perhaps won’t come out to some of those programs parents might not know about it, parents can’t them there parents might not even be in the home” explains the Mayor.
He says the real burden rests on the shoulders of parents. He adds “we’ve begun to talk about best practices and how maybe other jurisdictions may begin to legally hold parents responsible for activities of their children”.
The 11-year old suspect is being charged as a juvenile.
