Let's just give you the facts since it's all so depressing yet unsurprising: On Christmas Eve, a woman was shot in the arm while praying inside Centro Evangelistico Bethel Church in East Oakland about 9 p.m. She was with her twin boys, ages 7, and shielded them form the bullets.

Pastor Edvin Salguero was giving a sermon during the gunfire. He managed to help move around 100 other parishioners, "including 20 or 30 crying children," into a back room to safety. The bullets, it seems, were intended for a 17-year-old boy, also struck during the melee, "who was fired on as he left a liquor store that shares a parking lot with the church in a high-crime area."

The aforementioned female victim and mother, Maria Teresa Cordova, is expected to survive. So is the young male shooting victim.

No word yet if any arrests were made.

[Oakland Tribune]