OAKLAND, Calif. -- An 8-year-old girl on a sleepover was killed and two other children and a woman were wounded when a gunman opened fire at an apartment in a normally quiet neighborhood of Oakland late Wednesday, police said.
Alaysha Carradine died after a fusillade of bullets tore through the front security door of an apartment on the 3400 block of Wilson Avenue where she was staying overnight, relatives said.
Her friends, a 7-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother, suffered non-life-threatening wounds in the 11:18 p.m. shooting, as did the siblings' 63-year-old grandmother, who was shot in the leg, police said. Their names have not been released.
The shooting happened in the Dimond neighborhood above Interstate 580, an area unaccustomed to such violence. Bullet holes left gouges on a wall inside the apartment, and another round pierced the rear sliding-glass window.
No arrests have been made.
Khamel Hardin, 22, said he lives in the apartment with his sister, his mother and the injured children, who are his niece and nephew. Alaysha was a regular visitor, he said.
Hardin said he was getting ready to go to sleep Wednesday night when someone rang the doorbell. Then, five or six shots rang out.
"It was like it was a bomb, an explosion, just going off so quick," Hardin said as he used a spray bottle to try to clean up blood stains.
Hardin said he had no idea why anyone would open fire at his home. He said he doubted he was the shooter's intended target.
"That's what I don't know. I don't need to know people like that," Hardin said, adding that he had moved to the apartment nine months ago.
"I'm from San Pablo. I'm not from Oakland," he said. "I don't know anybody out here."
Jesse Fowler, 24, of Oakland, Alaysha's stepfather, said he was at a loss to understand why someone would open fire at a home with children inside.
"I really don't know," Fowler said. "It could have been a mistaken house, you know, any kind of thing. I really have don't have no clue. She plays here all the time."
He said, "I just want to know why you would shoot up a houseful of kids. Where do you get the satisfaction in that?"
Alaysha and the injured girl were child models and were to have gone to a modeling show Thursday, Fowler said.
Alaysha, whose nickname was "Ladybug," would have been a third-grader this fall at Fruitvale Elementary School in Oakland. She loved the Disney Channel and was a "phenomenal" reader, Fowler said.
"She was a breath of fresh air, one of the most smart, fun-loving, spunky kids you'd ever meet," he said. "Somebody that loves to help people, somebody that everybody loved, and everybody loved to be around her."
Fowler said he had to break the news by phone to Alaysha's mother, Chiquita Carradine, who was out of town.
Fred Lee, 52, who lives near the apartment building, said he has heard gunshots before, but nothing has ever struck so close to home.
"I used to see those kids laughing, playing out front," Lee said. "They were so sweet."
Robbin, 48, another neighbor who didn't want to give her last name, said her grandchildren had played with the two wounded children. The grandmother invited her to attend church.
"They were so nice," she said. "We'd drive down the street and wave and say 'hello,' and she'd say, 'Bless you.' "
Robbin said she had faith police would solve the crime, but she had little confidence they could stop the violence.
"You know what they can do? They can bring out the National Guard and the Guardian Angels and get them on the streets and stop all this."
Copyright 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
