The man who allegedly shot a 6-year-old girl, her parents, and another neighbor just because a basketball rolled into his yard has turned himself in, according to police authorities.
Robert Singletary is now under police custody as of Thursday after surrendering at Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office in Tampa. He appeared in court Friday, where he signed an extradition waiver, ABC News reported.
The 24-year-old caused a horrifying shooting incident Tuesday, triggered only by a basketball that bounced into his yard from a group of local kids playing basketball in the street outside his North Carolina residence.
He is charged with "four counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon,"
Man Charged for Shooting 6-Year-Old, Neighbors
Neighbors told WSOC-TV that when the basketball rolled into the suspect's yard, he got angry and opened fire at around eight in the evening at Gaston County.
Singletary was reported to have run down the street while firing at a neighbor, who was shot at but not injured. He then came back and began shooting at a family until his bullets were out, the New York Post reported.
A six-year-old girl named Kinsley White got stitches on her cheeks from bullet fragments. Her mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, who was grazed by a bullet, and her father, William White, who was shot in the back in his own front yard, were the other victims of the gunman.
Both Kinsley and mom Hilderbrand are now recovering at home. Unfortunately, William is still in the hospital under critical conditions. It was said that he tried to draw the gunshot toward him to protect his kids before he was struck in the back.
"He looked at my husband and my daughter and told them, 'I'm going to kill you,'" Hilderbrand narrated to WSOC-TV.
Neighbors further shared that Singletary was new in the neighborhood and was observed to have a bad temper with the kids in the area.
Shooting Incidents for Petty Reasons
Kinsley, though she only got a minor injury in the face, is going through some serious emotional damage and trauma, especially since she is so worried about her father.
She was able to speak to WSOC-TV's Ken Lemon. With a tight grip on her grandfather's hand, she asked the most daunting questions, "We don't even know the man. Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid's dad?"
It was found that the suspect was charged last December after hitting his girlfriend with a mini sledgehammer that led her to "bleed profusely from the back of the head." He allegedly forced her inside an apartment for two long hours to clean all the evidence of the assault or else she could not leave, police authorities reported.
"I want to say to the people of Gaston County this sort of violence will not stand," Stephen M. Zill, Gaston County Police chief, stressed in a press release.
Alarmingly, shooting incidents due to petty reasons and mistakes have been happening all over America for the past weeks. It can be recalled that two cheerleaders in Texas were shot after they entered the wrong car in a parking lot, a New York woman was shot and killed after she entered the wrong driveway, and recently, a 16-year-old Black boy in Missouri was shot after ringing the doorbell of an incorrect address.
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