Bay Area Girl, 9, Shot After Answering Door

HERCULES, Calif. (AP) — A 9-year-old girl has been shot and critically injured as she answered the door of a Hercules home. Police say someone knocked on the door of the home about 10:25 p.m. Friday and fired up to 10 shots before fleeing on foot. The girl was hit in her neck and back. She was taken to a hospital and listed in critical but stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.

This poor little girl. I wonder why some one would do this? Some prank, some maniac?

In September, a 57-year-old man was shot dead in the doorway of his home by two men who rang the doorbell. In August, a 25-year-old man was shot and killed when he answered the door. Other similar slayings have happened in Concord and Oakland.

Seems we have doorbell killers on the lose! I must now equip myself with a gun to protect myself in my own state!

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California's get your guns!

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


This is sad but I have to ask why is a 9 year old answering the door that late at night? Where were her parents? I know it won't change that someone got shot because if their goal was to shoot someone the parents would have been shot as well., but the parents should be answering the door.

I have heard that gang members do initiations like this, could be a possibility. Sad, I hope she is ok and has no long term physical problems. I know she will have emotional ones and I hope she gets help for it. Poor thing.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


You've lived in CA for more than 5 years right? If so, then it shouldn't surprise you that the East Bay is and always will be a very high crime part of the country. Oakland and Richmond both got on the Top 10 list for most violent cities in America and Hercules isn't but 15 mins out of Richmond so it's a suburb of crime. Children getting caught up in the violence is nothing new either as seen by the little boy shot in the back paralyzed by a stray bullet fired from the gun by the same goons who carjacked Don Perata.

It's only going to get worse with the dire economic of cities in the Bay Area so city cops are going to get laid off and the county sheriff's departments are spreading their staffing very thin. People need to very much watch out for themselves anywhere in the Bay Area because the sad reality of the situation is that nowhere are you completely safe from being the victim of a shooting.

California, get your guns? Are you serious?

California has one of the most restrictive legal structures for owning weapons for protection and self defense than practically any state in the country, with possibly the exception of massachusetts.

I guess the sound we here now are the chickens coming home to roost.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel

That is sad.

One of the guys in the foster home I was in when I was 13 snuck out one night and came back around 2am drunk and fell on the porch. The lady that ran the home grabbed her gun and shot through the door and killed him before she knew who it was.

Any way OP still sad I hope the cops get who ever it was

reply to post by MMPI2


San Francisco a few years back passed a law that restricted the ownership of handguns in the city limits. I remember my father (who's a cop in San Francisco) telling me at the time that even if it passed, no cop in the City was actually going to enforce the law because the knew it was against someone's Constitutional rights. The only reason it passed was because most cops in SF don't actually live in the city (cost of living) and were completely against it and the fear campaign waged by the proposition's supporters. The cops knew that the prop was complete BS since the one's committing the crimes with a firearm got those guns illegally anyway and would only hurt the citizen protecting themselves. Thank goodness it got shot down in the courts.