Friends, neighbors still shook after Christmas Day shootings killed and wounded children
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- They happened in different parts of the city, but the feelings and message were the same two days after a pair of Christmas Day shootings that killed or wounded children in Milwaukee.
About a dozen teens gathered Friday night at the corner of S. 37th St. and W. Scott St. in the Silver City neighborhood. They held a short vigil for 15-year-old Exziel Rivera, who was one of two teens killed in a shooting there about 54 hours earlier.
Milwaukee police said at around noon on Wednesday, a gunman shot and killed two teens. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office identified the victims as Rivera and 18-year-old Nayah Vazquez. Police were still working to identify a suspect as of Friday.
According to the medical examiner's report, the victims were seated in a car when the suspect shot them. Friends of Rivera wrapped a tree near the shooting scene with photos of the teen and two balloons forming a '15,' commemorating the birthday the boy celebrated less than one month earlier.
"That was like my big brother," Laylannie Cintron said of Rivera before breaking down into tears. "Really, really hard. Really hard. I'll just miss him."
Harmony Meeser and Taura Zwicky said they knew Rivera from the neighborhood. Similar to Cintron's comments, they described the boy as a brotherly figure.
"He was always caring, he always had a good smile," Meeser said. "He always knows how to make somebody laugh."
Eight miles away, directly to the north, neighbors said they were still shaken two days after a shooting wounded a 6-year-old girl in an apartment near the intersection of N. 35th St. and W. Kaul Ave.
Milwaukee police described the victim's injuries as "serious" after the shooting Wednesday. On Friday, an MPD spokesperson did not have an update on the girl's condition and said investigators were still working to identify a suspect.
A teenage boy outside the building declined to be interviewed Friday but said he helped place the girl on her back in the hallway of the apartment building after the shooting. He said the girl had been shot in her leg, abdomen and arm.
EMS radio traffic on Wednesday morning relayed five gunshot wounds across those parts of the victim's body. First responders noted the girl was alert and answering questions while en route to the hospital.
The teen who said he helped at the apartment added he's lost a brother to gun violence and admitted he'd been struggling to process everything he saw Wednesday.
A woman who lives in a neighboring building that's also part of the Florist Townhomes complex said the shooting hit close to home because she has a 7-year-old son. The woman asked to speak anonymously out of concern for her own safety. She said stray bullets from another shooting went into her apartment earlier this year.
"It just makes me want to get away," she said. "I don't want my child to have to be the next one."
The woman said six bullets went into her apartment during that incident, but none of them hit anyone. She said her son has since been afraid of coming home. She said Wednesday's incident was the third shooting at the complex she could recall from the two years she's lived in the apartments.
"He'll just scream not to come home and tell me he wants to go to my mother's house," she said. "Because of the things that goes on here, and also from when our apartment got shot up."
The woman said she was upset over knowing her son was now old enough to recognize the violence happening around his home. On the south side, the teens also expressed a desire to live in a less violent environment.
"They just need to put the guns down, bro," Meeser said. "It's no reason for the guns to be out."