MIAMI — Police say a 10-year-old boy approached his father with an unusual request: Could he take him to do a drive-by shooting in Opa-locka with a paint gun? The father, 26-year-old Michael Williams, agreed, detectives say.
Williams’ van pulled up to the house on Rutland Street, and the boy began to shoot paint balls into the crowd, where some other young people were gathering in the front yard. But the resident, Gregory Barns, believed “he and his family were under attack” — and squeezed off one round with a real gun, wounding the boy on Sunday night, according to police.
Williams has now been charged with child neglect with great bodily harm, saying he “acted recklessly by agreeing to conduct a drive-by paint ball shooting,” according to a police report made public on Tuesday.
To add insult to injury, the boy somehow fell out of the van and got run over by it.
According to police, Williams’s son approached him over the weekend and asked if his father would take him to do a drive-by shooting with a paintball gun in Opa-locka, a city in Miami-Dade County that has been so beset with gun violence that a resident recently called it “the devil’s dungeon.”
Williams allegedly agreed and drove the boy to a home in the small city where a group of children had gathered on the front lawn.
After being struck with the bullet, police said, the 10-year-old fell out of the van and was run over as the vehicle continued to move. Williams then scooped the boy back into the van and drove home, where the boy’s mother called 911, according to a police report.
The boy is in the hospital, there’s no other information on his condition.
