The boy didn’t see the car circling the block. He didn’t hear anyone yelling gang slogans.
Sitting at a picnic table with his dad near a few siblings and some friends, 10-year-old Joseph had finished playing soccer and was eating a hot dog the way he likes it.
“Ketchup, and that’s it,” he said.
He heard something that sounded like fireworks. People started running away from the lawn where the group had gathered between two buildings in the brick townhome apartment complex on Aurora’s east side.
When a bullet grazed his head, it felt like a rock, Joseph said Monday. He didn’t see who shot it. It hit up high, just to the left of the whorl in the back of his head.
Even two days after the Saturday night shooting in the 100 block of North Ohio Street, dried blood coats the spot less than an inch long where it looks like his black hair was shaved off.
“I was trying to hide,” Joseph said. “Like in the back of the building.”
During the chaos, Joseph said he kept thinking this was it.
“Like that I was gonna die,” he said.
When firefighters came, they put bandages on the wound and asked him questions.
“What was my name and where do I live, and I forgot,” Joseph said.
Police continue to investigate the incident that began about 10:58 p.m. Saturday with a report that shots were fired at several people as they sat in an outdoor common area.
The suspects, including one who was armed, approached the group on foot from behind a home in the 900 block of Fulton Street, opened fire, yelled a gang slogan and ran back to a Jeep Wrangler that had been reported stolen out of Aurora, according to police.
The boy was the only person struck by the gunfire, although several rounds entered the apartment building, according to police.
Police do not believe Joseph’s family was targeted, they said in a news release. The Beacon-News is not identifying Joseph by last name because he is a crime victim.
Band-Aids covering the wound came off Monday, and Joseph went to his fifth-grade class at Rollins Elementary like it was any other day.
Now that the wound is exposed, he’s supposed to be careful.
“Like don’t put dirt on it,” Joseph said, describing the care instructions.
He had a good day at school, and he said he’s glad he went. He likes math, especially addition. His teacher didn’t say anything about what happened Saturday, and his classmates didn’t ask him too many questions, he said.
At home, it’s nice to have his five siblings around, he said, andhe doesn’t know if he’ll go back to hang out with his friends at the apartments nearby.
Joseph’s mother, Jessica, teared up as she watched him talk outside their home Monday afternoon.
“Every time I think about it, it’s like, it’s a miracle that he’s alive,” she said. “God is really big.”
When it happened, she was at work, and that devastates her.
“His head was full of blood,” she said. “It was hard not to be with him.”
Her husband was at the cookout with five of their six children. The family has lived there for one year, she said.
“They were just having a cookout,” she said. “It was like a first time having a cookout with the neighbors.”
It might be their last.The children are afraid to go back over now, she said.
“It is too dangerous around here,” she said. “There is nothing much I can do. It all happens for a reason. I always say that.”
A 14-year-old girl who lives at the apartment complex said she recalled seeing a black Jeep driving around, and hearing men yelling out of the car.
That was scary, she said. Being outdoors while it is light out is OK, but she said she tries not to stay out too late.
“When it gets dark, we go inside,” she said.
While Joseph was the only person hit or grazed by a bullet, another child in the family narrowly missed another, his mother said.
“My daughter, you know how (bullets) are really hot, she has a burn spot on her leg,” she said.
Haley, 12, pointed to the spot where her leg was burned by the passing bullet. It doesn’t hurt anymore, she said.
“There was a car passing by a lot of times,” the father said in Spanish, as his wife translated.
Some of the people were starting to fight with the ones in the car, he said.
“The car that was passing by, he went to the parking lot in the back, and that’s when they started shooting,” he said through his wife. “Everybody ran toward the wall to cover themselves.”
He led the kids toward the wall, where people could duck down, the mother said.
“When he thought the shots were over, he looked, and they were shooting, they started shooting again,” she said.
The father thinks there were at least 10 shots fired, he said.
Less than 10 minutes after the shooter’s car drove off, suspects matching the same description and driving the same vehicle were involved in a shooting in the 1300 block of Plum Street, where a 49-year-old man was struck in the neck, police said.
Police haven’t made any arrests in connection with the shootings. They’re still in the preliminary stages of investigation and can’t rule out the possibility of the shootings being connected to an armed robbery and carjacking earlier in the day, Lt. Jeff Wiencek said Monday.
Joseph’s mother said she hopes whoever fired the shots is caught and punished. But the most important thing is that her kids are safe, she said.
“The only thing I care is that I still have my son with me,” the mother said. “My daughter, she was scared too. Everybody was scared.”
Twitter @hannahmleone
