The home of a family of ten on Benbow Street was shot up and two were injured while the family was sleeping around 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 11.
Carline Pinto, 11, and her brother, Tyrone 18, were shot. Carline was shot in the chest, stomach, shoulder and right foot, and her condition at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital has been listed as critical.
Tyrone was shot in the right knee. He was treated and later released.
The mother of the family, Arlene Banner, said that the whole episode was a frightening experience. She told Amandala that she was at home sleeping with her eight children that Saturday morning when around 4:57, she was awakened by multiple gunshots being fired. Some of the bullets went through the walls of her house.
Banner ran out of her bedroom into the hall, and heard her son, Tyrone, cry out, “Mommy, Carline get shot.”
Not knowing that he himself had been shot, Tyrone tried to lift her up to take her to the hall when he fell down, and that was when he saw his knees bleeding and realized that he had also been shot.
The older brother, who by this time had gotten up, quickly grabbed his sister and took her outside, at the same time alerting the neighbors. The neighbors quickly took the two injured children, Carline and Tyrone, to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, where emergency medical treatment was conducted to stabilize Carline. She was then taken to the Intensive Care Unit, where she is presently fighting for her life in a critical but stable condition.
Arlene Banner said that around 10 shots were fired at the house, and two hours before the shooting, a man had come to the house and banged on her door, and demanded to be let in, but she refused and did not let him in.
Shortly after, the Gang Supression Unit (GSU) came and was seeking one Kenton, who she did not know. The GSU conducted a search of the house, but nothing was found and they departed, and shortly after, the gunman or gunmen came and fired at her house.
Banner said that she has been living in the area for the past sixteen years, and this is the first time that her house has been targeted by gunmen. She said that she does not have a misunderstanding with anyone and is at a loss why her house is being targeted. She is respectable in the neighborhood, she said, and lives well with the neighbors.
Police have since launched an investigation but so far no suspect has yet been arrested, and the motive for the attack on the home of Arlene Banner is yet unknown.
Like the family of Eyanie Nunez, 10, a student of standard 5, All Saints Primary School, who was shot and killed while sleeping in her home on Zericote Street, and now Carline Pinto, a student of standard 5, Queen’s Square Anglican School, who was also shot and severely injured while sleeping in her bed, Carline Pinto’s family is asking one question – why?
However, Banner said that her house is her castle, and she will not move away from the area.