The shooting happened inside the Arcilla Playground in the Lounge area at around 8pm
“She was bleeding into her braids. Down her shirt. She was oozing. No one knew what was going on,” said Russell Thomas, whose 17-year-old daughter was one of the injured.
The bullet grazed the back of her head and lodged in her skull. She remained in the ICU at Harlem Hospital on Tuesday.
“She’s so scared for her life. She’s saying, ‘Daddy, I don’t want to die,'” he said.
Tamiyah Thomas just graduated from high school with honors in Virginia. She and her twin sisters flew to New York to visit relatives in the Melrose neighborhood of the Bronx.
Monday night, she called her father to say they were having a fun family barbecue on Teller Ave.
Hours later, shots were fired at a basketball game and blood poured from her head.
Another innocent bystander, another 17-year-old girl, was shot in the leg. She is also expected to survive.
Playgrounds remain locked on Tuesday. Crime scene tapes provide a grim reminder that gunfire is all too familiar.
“We’re in a poor neighborhood. We’re trying our best. Parents are trying as hard as they can. This is a safe haven to take the kids to the park,” said resident. resident Anthony Rodriguez said.
Street violence is exactly why Russell Thomas doesn’t want to raise his family in the Bronx. He and his wife ran to Harlem hospital to pray for a full recovery.
Surveillance video shows crowds running from the park after the shooting. Some ducks entered a deli for shelter. The worker moved them out of the glass window and locked the front door.
“Put down the guns. Let’s come together. Let’s fellowship together. It’s the only way to help the community,” Thomas said.
Police arrested a man with a gun on Monday night, but charges have yet to be filed at the time of this writing.
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