A video captured the stunning moment when a group of 7 and 8-year-old baseball players in North Carolina were forced to hit the dirt after gunshots were heard ripping across the diamond.
At approximately 10.30am on Sunday, a group of under-8 players were playing in a Little League state championship tournament game at the Gillette Athletic Complex on Corbett Avenue in Wilson, about 50 miles east of Raleigh.
Part way through the match, a disturbing sound was heard tearing through the baseball diamond. Three distinct gunshots were fired off from somewhere in the parking lot, with one of the bullets landing just feet from a player, WITN reported.
Bull City Little League Assistant Coach Chris Breslin told WGN 9 that the gunshot sounds themselves didn’t even register in his mind, rather it was the terrifying sound of something sinister “whizzing” past his ear – which he believed to be one of the bullets – that sent him into action.
“It was horrific. When I hit the ground, I remember thinking, this is the worst possible thing,” he told the news outlet.
Separate video footage released from the Sunday morning game showed the assistant coach crawling on his stomach to get on top of one of the elementary-age players and shield them from the unseen shooter. “[The player] was so scared. He kept saying, ‘I don’t want to play baseball. Is the bad man coming? I’m scared’ … It was terrible.”
The video footage shared with WITN shows the Little League players alongside adult coaches and referees standing in the North Carolina baseball diamond, engaged in the game until the three distinct sounds of gunfire cut through and the players momentarily freeze before dropping to the ground. Parents and spectators off-camera can be heard shouting “get down!” while some of the children begin to army-crawl across the field in an attempt to get to safety.
In a statement shared on the South Durham Little League Facebook page on Monday, the league confirmed that they had made the “difficult decision” that was not “made lightly” to pull both their 8U Orange All Star team and the 9U All Star team out of the tournament.
This was “not the way we wanted the All-Star runs to end for these amazing teams, but in the end it was the only choice we could make”, the league said.
“Tragic events such as these are happening far too often in our country. We too often think it won’t happen to us. Today, it happened for 7- and 8-year-old Little League players, for children and coaches we all know,” the league said, noting that several other leagues had made the same call to pull their own under-8 and under-9 teams out of the tournament.
As of Monday, four of the other six leagues participating in the 9U tournament and five of the other 11 leagues in the 8U tournament had withdrawn, they stated.
“No child or parent should ever experience anything like this. Our hearts are heavy tonight.”
Some of the parents interviewed who witnessed the terrifying ordeal take place said they were left speechless by the incident, while others expressed how they were primed to think a more sinister event was unfolding when they heard gunshots ring out.
Dominique Williams, who was watching his own son play, told WITN that he suspected the gunshots were coming from an active shooter, and so he sprang into action to retrieve his own firearm from his parked car.
“I had a pistol in my car and as I was running to my car I was thinking, ‘Do I go get my son or do I go and get my pistol?’ so I made the decision to fight back in case the shooter approached,” Mr Williams told the news outlet.
Authorities on Monday said they don’t suspect that the shooter had intentionally targeted anyone at the Little League baseball game, but they are still searching for the suspect.
In a press release from the Wilson Police Department, the force said the Sunday morning shooting is considered an active investigation. The department is asking anyone with information about the incident to follow-up with the force or if they’d prefer to remain anonymous, tips can be sent to Crime Stoppers.
