CLEVELAND — There were three shootings involving teenagers in about 24 hours in Cleveland over the weekend.
There were bullet holes and shattered car windows on East 142nd Street, where one of the shootings happened. Neighbors who did not want to speak on camera told News 5 that a shooter was spraying bullets from across the street. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the arm and the leg.
In a separate shooting in Cleveland on Sunday, officials said a 13-year-old boy was accidentally shot and killed by a family member.
In a third shooting, a 13-year-old girl was shot while she was riding in a stolen Kia.
"This young girl snuck out of the house and became involved with this group who were driving around in a stolen Kia, and whoever that group was feuding with, somebody shot up the car, and she’s an unfortunate victim,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley.
Juvenile crime has skyrocketed in Cuyahoga County.
Last week, police arrested children as young as 12 years old in connection to a string of stolen cars.
“It’s a big problem,” O’Malley said.
There is now a growing chorus of voices calling for parents to know where their children are and what they’re doing.
“It’s going to take parents making sure their children are home when curfew hits. Having 12 or 13 or 14-year-olds out at one o’clock in the morning is unacceptable, and it violates the law,” said O’Malley.
“Parents have to be held accountable,” said Mike Polensek, Chair of the Cleveland City Council's Safety Committee. “The level of violence that we’ve seen in the city is unprecedented."
Polensek asked federal law enforcement and Ohio State Highway Patrol for help. He said Cleveland Police staffing levels are what they were in 1923.
“As the number of police officers dropped, the violence went up. So, this whole thing that is being said that there’s no correlation between the number of police officers working the street and deployed doesn’t have any impact on crime, who came up with that crap?” said Polensek.
There is a Safety Committee Meeting on Wednesday where details of the Cleveland Police policing plan for the rest of the summer are expected to be announced.
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