A New Hampshire family shot at with a BB gun says they’ll never feel safe in Manchester again, and it turns out they weren’t the only victims.
Police in Manchester, New Hampshire, are searching for a group of young males accused of shooting a BB gun at a passing motorist and a pedestrian on Wednesday night.
For the family in the car, they'll never feel safe in the city they visit often again after what appears to have been a random act of violence, they said.
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"All I want is for the parents of these kids to come upfront ... and to apologize because they did make a lot of damage to an 11-year-old. Maybe not physically but mentally, definitely," said the mother, who didn't want to be identified.
No arrests have been made, Manchester police said Thursday. They said officers received a call around 11 p.m. from a woman at the TD Bank on South Main Street who said she had been shot by a BB gun.
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The woman told police she was in her car, stopped at the intersection of Granite and Second streets, when a silver SUV occupied by three young males pulled up alongside her and the front passenger motioned for her to roll down her window.
When she did, the front passenger asked her for directions. She was unable to help as she was not from the area, police said.
"I don't know if they're lost. They looked very young," said the woman, from Goffstown.
At that point, the woman said the group began calling her names and a passenger in the front seat started shooting what she believed to be a BB gun. One of the BBs hit her in the leg and another narrowly missed her daughter, according to the woman and police.
"They start calling us all the bad names in the book. I felt uncomfortable and then they start shooting the BB gun on us," she said.
She reacted in an instant, telling her daughter, whose window was open, to put her seat back to get out of the way.
"One bullet did hit me in the leg. Nothing major. One went right, straight by her face, next to her eye. It could've been very ugly," she said.
The daughter said she was scared when the BBs started flying at her: "I really felt uncomfortable and that was just a really big shock to me."
The car sped away. The woman took a picture of it and called Manchester police. She described the driver as a male, possibly a teenager, with short blondish hair. The front passenger's face was concealed, but he had dark hair and was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. She said the passenger in the back seat was a heavy-set male with blond hair. The woman was also able to provide police with a license plate number.
Around the same time as that incident, a man walked into WMUR-TV on South Commercial Street and asked the staff to call police, officials said. He said he had been shot with a BB gun while walking west on Granite Street from Elm Street when a silver SUV drove by.
Police were able to determine that the SUV was registered to a Hillsboro resident. Hillsboro police located the vehicle a short time later, but there were only two people inside.
Officials said police are taking this case seriously.
"BB guns can be very dangerous," said Heather Hamel, a police spokeswoman. "They're not a toy. They can cause serious injury, they can even cause death."
Manchester police said the incidents remains under investigation and charges may be forthcoming. Anyone with information about these incidents or additional incidents is asked to call them at (603) 668-8711.
