As about 150 chattering tweeners filtered out of a hip-hop mixer at around 9 pm from the auditorium at St. Anne's, the sound of pop! pop! poppoppop! sent the crowd immediately screaming and scattering down the sidewalk into the dark, spilling out in front of headlights, and dropping to the ground in confused chaos.
It sounded like firecrackers from inside the bedroom window, but after things died down we emerged to walk to dinner and spotted three chalk circles around casings found right out front. Quiet police lights blocked off the street and cops dressed in black windbreakers steadily scanned the ground
with flashlights and questioned neighbors asking what they saw and heard.
A stout pock-marked cop approached us, nodding his head in agreement as we described the pops and scatter, then shaking it in disbelief; "all these kids... what were they thinking?" But that's exactly what they were thinking-- an excellent audience. Maximum impact. Pumped up on a Friday night full of gun-toting lyrics, cleavage, inebriation. The cop said they think it's an older teenager, maybe sixteen.
Packs of leftover hip-hop mixer kids wandered loudly around the neighborhood on our way to 9th. We wondered, what was the shooter was thinking? That they'd be able to hide on the inside as an outsider? Clearly those kids were not from this neighborhood, that parish. Let's break it down: a) the kid has access to a gun, b) decides to take the gun out for the night, c) proceeds to get loaded, and finally d) pulls it out and discharges it into a crowd of kids. Yeah, kids do grow up faster these days... but this is unbelievable.