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A SEVEN-YEAR-old boy was shot and killed during a birthday party in North Carolina over the weekend.
The boy was among five killed in shootings during a violent Labour Day weekend in the state’s largest city of Charlotte.
Another child and two other adults were wounded at the birthday party, but their injuries were not life threatening, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Jeff Estes said.
“It’s a sad state of affairs in the city and our country when a 7-year-old boy can’t be free to celebrate a birthday party without being murdered,” Estes said at a news conference Sunday.
Police haven’t identified suspects or a motive in Kevin Antonio Calderon Rodas’ death.
Other fatal shootings
The other three fatal shootings this weekend also remain unsolved, Estes said.
The sudden spate of violence led officials to call in officers from days off and vacation to help patrol and investigate, Estes said. He said the extra officers would be used to search for illegal guns, among other steps.
“We think it is an absolute tragedy that in Charlotte-Mecklenburg we are seeing this type of violence,” Estes said. “We will not rest or not stop until we do everything we can to put a stop to it.”
Tragic loss of life
While officers investigated the boy’s killing, authorities said they heard shots nearby about three hours later and found a woman dead and a man wounded from what appeared to be a drive-by shooting.
Also over the holiday weekend, a man was found dead from gunshot wounds in east Charlotte on Sunday morning, and police found a man shot to death Saturday morning in northwest Charlotte after a second man was dropped off at the hospital where he died from gunshot wounds.
“It is too early to say if any will be connected or not,” Estes said. “I can tell you what connects them is it is a senseless, tragic loss of life.”
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These stories are becoming all too familiar. RIP kid.
If only there had been good men there with even bigger guns this could have been prevented.
Can’t wait to see the NRA defend this one as they always do. Another pointless death.
they will probably say if he had a gun he could have defended himself. ..
THEY DON’T NEED to defend it. The United States government works for lobbyists not the people of the united states. Large majorities easily support all kinds of strong gun control but even the weak, pathetic proposal by Obama to do a basic background check first failed to pass congress even though 94% approved of it. Why? because they don’t have public financing of elections, so rely on lobbyist money to get elected and the NRA pays their bills, so that makes them the NRA’s BOY…they do exactly what the lobbyist from the NRA tells them not their constituents.
it’s the same reason they can’t help but destabalize the middle east more and more even though their own experts ( calling the steep rise in terrorism the war on terror is actually causing ‘the iraq effect’) tell them it’s making them more enemies …because the lobbyists from Raytheon and Lockheed pay their bills and they become their boy too. You need $1,000,000,000,000 to run a Presidential campaign now, and these people don’t give out cash for nothing in return.
Great post Ryan, so much for democracy.
A grassroots organization of conservatives, libertarians and progressives have come together to try to push for a constitutional convention to deal with all this stuff, using a little known part of the US Constitution to by-pass congress and the President, and they already have a couple of states approving of their plan:
@Ryan Anthony – A trillion dollars! That’s crazy money! Where does each candidate get a trillion dollars! Even if the total for all was a trillion that’s still incredible!! Jeez no wonder they’re in the state they are! A TRILLION dollars!!??
Holy pineapples. Madness . Doesn’t even shock the system as it should as it’s that consistent. R.I.P little man
Good old US of A.
Tragic, awful, senseless and so unnecessary.
The child died so that the American dream of an armed populace, armed with human killing instruments, legally or illegally held, can be fulfilled. The right to arms is perceived as a vastly more important value than the right to life.
The 2nd amendment being to prevent government tyranny OR for self defense is a myth invented by NRA pr teams in the 70s. Look back at the actual continental congress and debates it was about semi-civilian militias that were meant to be formed to prevent slaves fleeing from slave states to ‘free’ states.
It had NOTHING to do with any of the crap they cite today.
The gun manufactures just came up with that and all these dense yokels bought into it
FYI America: you already have tyranny You are 28 times more likley to get shot by your own cops than die in a terrorist attack, people do life in prison for having pot plants, the govt monitors every keystroke of your computers and hacks your laptops webcams, the police arrest people in some areas for saggy pants and kill them in the process of arrest, you already live in a police state and the guns didn’t prevent it
The U.S. Supreme Court ignored the true historical context of a collective armed militia being on call in case of armed hostilities. It was originally intended, either in its literal wording or in its historical construction, an individual right to bear arms.
They ignore lots of things, they expect us to take the concept that a corporation is a person, a person has free speech rights, and money = speech seriously, and because of that decision recently and the main one in the 70s the NRA and other lobby groups for special interests have this kind of power to begin with.
They’ve the most blood on their hands here, the SC (or more a clerk in that 70s case, who, amazingly alternated their judgement to fit his ideology, and future SC’s just went with it…AMAZING!) opened this pandooras box by letting money flood politics. In the 1960s with the Great Society reforms like medicare and PBS and the war on poverty and civil righs, one of the big items was a ban on military-grade guns being sold to civilians and this stuff didn’t happen, then in the 70s the money came in, lobbyists and NRA pr went to work and boom….a river of blood for the streets, rivers of cash for the gun makers who are making a killing out of the mid east too, may they burn in hell
dreadful news
why isn’t the journal reporting on the race of the victim and whether he was armed or not???? I mean in the last 12 months the journal has on certain incidents made it their business to make reference to the race of the person.#clickbait #gutterjournalism
No, they’ve made reference to the colour of the person. “Race” is antiquated. There is no such thing as the Black race or the White race. Just the human race. How white do you have to be to be white?
7 year old armed? Joe…….
There is reason to mention the race if you are talking about racism or a situation where you are pointing out, for example, that in the US blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate but blacks get arrested 6 times more. Why would you use it when color is not a factor?
A 7 yr old armed ???…..
@joe
Yes, Ryan Anthony, but what determines those rates? A pure white? A white with one non white grandparent?
In other words, it’s not based on “race”. it’s based on colour!
you only have to be 1/8 black to be black!
According to the NRA if everyone carried a gun tragedies like this would never happen.
The wife of a guy in another case recently explained that was his philosophy too. He kept it in the night stand locker.
On another topic police in the US frequently do ‘no knock’ warrants , that are meant to be done only if there is a huge danger of armed resistance but they’ve abused it to routine now. So one day they get intel (false) that he was growing pot (ohhh how evil…) in that house so they kicked the door down without announcing themselves, yelled police quickly but they were downstairs when they yelled that he was still in the process of waking suddenly so all he prob heard was the crash of the door and the noisemaker they tossed in. So he readies his gun and to his horror sees these guys in all black appear at his bedroom door in balaclavas, he aims to shoot and is gunned down.
There was no pot, they got the wrong house.
God love his family! Such a senseless act of violence on what should be a joyous occasion
@Caroline. …..at last someone with a a shread of humanity about a 7 yr getting killed. …
I honestly can’t imagine what his family are going through. I mean one minute you are celebrating your child’s birthday. Maybe even eating birthday cake and then suddenly for no known reason someone shots him in front of you. It’s heartbreaking
A gun before a beer I mean that says it all. Fruitloops and gun nuts
Guns don’t kill people, people do….
maybe we should stop giving people guns then
All I read is that a 7yr old boy was shot and killed. ….how do his family feel tonight ? ??….can any one of us feel the loss of that ?.. Can we stop bitching about gun laws etc in US…we don’t live there ! stop grabbing … ( or trying to ) green thumbs and START being human.
the more that you read, the worse this and other stories become. Guns…the saviour of peace..but deadly awful pieces used as self defence in the wrong times in the wrong places. I’m glad I am Irish now. We looked at places to visit this year, the Med was a no no, middle east, definite no, far east, nope, america..I’m not bringing my kids there, too many shootings, so thats a no. staycati
staycation is the only way I feel safe. It’s sad but true
Spent a week in Boston/Cambridge Mass, recently rode the busses, subway, taxis, only guns I saw were carried by the Police felt as safe as I have in Dublin/Limerick and certainly safer than much of London. (I know all about the dodgy areas you don’t go particularly as a white guy etc etc) only my very limited (US) observation!!
A lot of my family are American, my cousin was amazed to see our cops didn’t have pistols he said what happens when a guy with a gun is involved in a situation
“we call in officers who do have guns”
“but what if the unarmed ones are first on the scene?”
“they have to deal with it as best they can”
“wow..and ours strut around saying they’re brave..”
Walking around a shopping centre in Newry i find it unsettling to see cops with guns its only thing that lets you know you are in the north, besides the money of course.. You won’t see many guns in the big cities, you will see it in the redder states and purple states. The guys who tend to ‘open carry’ according to my Navy cousin who lives in Texas where a lot of them live, are “thumb dicked beta males who are overcompensating”
This is life for most of the lower class of society in America, and to a lesser extent the middle class, if a survey was compiled on what class of people have been shot/ murdered over the last decade, I’m pretty sure it would be well over 90% low class citizens, this will never change as there is so many guns in circulation across America and the fact you can pretty much purchase a gun over the counter for not much money so these sad stories will always be in the news for many years to come.
It’s why they should have a mandatory concealed carry law for everyone over five.
Hoax.
oh give it a rest !
ffs
God Bless America.
Here are are the pictures of 168 Children who were Victims of American Gun Violence
Alex jones would say the shooter was defending himself, either that or the kid should carry a semi-auto
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