CLEVELAND — Maosha Vales is a Cleveland mother who is now left to hope and pray Cleveland gun violence will be somehow be reduced in 2023, after her home was hit by random gunfire on Dec. 21.
Vales and her boyfriend, Reshard Roberts, told News 5 that more than a dozen shots pierced their Kipling Avenue home just before 4 a.m., hitting their television, glass furniture, their living room couch with some slugs left embedded into their kitchen cabinets.
Vales said her daughter was in the home, along with a family and their young children on the second floor on the duplex, when the shooting started. Vales said the gunfire started at the top of her street and continued as two men started started shooting into her home.
“She heard gun shots she said were getting closer and closer, and she didn’t think nothing of it until she heard the shattering of the glass and realized it was going into our house," Vales said. “I just couldn’t believe it she was panicking she was crying. She was in the room, if that bullet would have hit her or anybody, I usually have grand kids over here.”
Roberts said he was left stunned by the incident, feels fortunate no one was hit by the gunfire and believes firearms training is a must, even though Ohioans no longer need a permit to conceal carry a gun.
“They should have some kind of training, to know the difference of what’s going on, how to use them and what not to do, but you’ll still have a few idiots out here," Roberts said. “This coming year, put guns down and help each other out.”
Cleveland police reported thecity once again topped 100 homicides in 2022, with MetroHealth and University Hospitals reporting their level-one trauma centers treated more than 2,400 patients for gunshot wounds over the past 30 months.
Cleveland police are still searching for suspects and are asking anyone with information about the Kipling Avenue gunfire on Dec. 21 to please contact the 5th District Detective Bureau at 216-623-5518.
Meanwhile, Vales has a simple message for the people who shot up her home, and hope that Cleveland gun violence will slow down in 2023.
“Once it comes out that barrel there’s no coming back, you don’t know if it hit somebody," Vales said. “I’m very blessed that they’re okay, because it’s tragic, it’s just scary to even be here right now."
Just to see the bullet holes and just to think about what it could have done," Vales added. “Think about what if it was your kids in the house and a stray bullet came back and accidentally hit one of your kids.”
