Child shot on near east side, one of many similar cases in the area

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – A child was shot on the city’s near east side, according to police.

Officers were called to a residence in the 2500 block of East Brookside Avenue around 3:45 a.m. Monday for a report of a person shot.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said shots were fired into a residence, grazing the child who was asleep at the time.

The child was taken to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.

Police said the child is expected to be OK.

No information on a suspect has been released.

Just in the last 6 months on the east side and north east side of Indianapolis at least three children have been hit by bullets that were not intended for them.

The child shot Monday morning on Brookside Ave, on May 26 a 10-month-old baby was shot inside of an apartment after a bullet went through two walls, and on March 31 an 8-year-old boy died after a bullet entered his home on Tacoma Avenue.

Deven Watson lives on Brookside avenue with his family including his 14-year-old brother. Hearing the news about the shooting is concerning.

“Cause you never know when something like that could actually happen to your own family,” said Watson. He says in his neighborhood the constant ringing of bullets sounds like fireworks.

Reverend Charles Harrison with the Ten Point Coalition is friends with the family of the 8-year-old boy who was killed. “Just seeing the grief and the pain that family was going through and the mother, people don’t understand that devastation,” said Harrison.

Harrison says that people have become numb to the problem. He says that Indianapolis has so much random violence that people disregard the fact that their bullet has to land somewhere. “That is the danger of pulling that trigger,” said Harrison.

Harrison says that in his 20 years of working in Indianapolis he says that violence is getting to a level that he has never seen before.