MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Dozens of young children practicing football at a Minneapolis park were spared when bullets began to fly over their heads from a rolling gun battle one shaken mother described in a Facebook post that has been widely viewed.
Carrie Heinrich said 50 or so children and a handful of parents heard fireworks one evening last week while the players were practicing at Jordan Park. But soon, gunfire rang out as a car slowly turned the corner. Coaches ordered the players, ages 5 to 14, to get down as bullets flew overhead and pinged off posts at the park, Heinrich said in her post, which has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.
“The worst feeling as a parent,” Heinrich said, “was seeing my kid out in the middle of an open field with bullets flying and not being able to get to him.”
Gunfire sprayed from one moving vehicle to another over the heads of those on the playing field as coaches and parents swooped up the children, hustled them into vehicles and took them a coach’s house nearby.
June 22 was an especially violent day in Minneapolis when nine people were shot and two were stabbed. It comes amid skyrocketing gun violence since George Floyd’s May 25 death at the hands of Minneapolis police.
No arrests have been made in the park shooting, police said.
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