A chaotic, scary scene unfolded at a Pop Warner football game on Sunday at Oakland Technical High School, when shots rang out and a child was hit with a bullet, and parents and kids ran screaming.
As ABC 7 now reports, via witnesses, the shooting may have stemmed from a fight between two parents behind the bleachers at the game. The pee-wee football game, for boys age 10 and under, was taking place on the field behind the high school at 4351 Broadway, in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood.
A visiting team from Fresno, called Valley Boys, was in town playing the Oakland boys' team. The coach of Valley Boyz, Francine Loya, told ABC 7 she heard about six shots ring out, and then maybe six more.
"My first instinct was to get the boys that were right next to me off the field, so we started running across the field, and I just told them to drop to the ground and I jumped on like five of them and just landed on top of them, and once I heard the shooting stop, I picked my head up and another six shots rang out," Loya said.
Loya tells the station that "parents were running and screaming for their kids," and, "I started helping parents who were throwing their kids over the fence to the field to get away from the back of the bleachers."
Cellphone video from the scene shows parents and kids trying to scatter from the bleachers.
Quintrell Dotson, who coaches the Oakland team, tells ABC 7 that he heard the fight was between two parents — but Oakland police have yet to discuss a motive for the shooting or what preceded it, and no arrests have been made. One of the victims, a man, was hit by a stray bullet. Another victim was a five-year-old girl, and the third victim was an adult woman.
All three victims are in stable condition and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, as KTVU reports.
"I really don't know if they both was shooting at each other," Dotson tells the station, regarding the parents.
As NBC Bay Area reports, the Oakland youth team, the Oakland Dynamites, have issued a statement describing the situation as "street beef that spilled onto the football field."
The team issued an apology to parents, saying, "We don't condone any of the senseless violence that occurred today. We are also gonna cooperate with the police and city officials to see that all parties involved go to jail!"
Anyone with any information about the incident is encouraged to contact the Oakland Police Felony Assault Unit at (510) 238-3426.
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