Two teenage girls are recovering tonight from gunshot wounds after shots were fired in a quiet East Moline neighborhood early this morning. The people responsible are still out there.
The shooting happened around two this morning on the 400 block of 15th Avenue. Police say a stolen vehicle was involved, it was taken from the 1600 block of 13th Avenue in Moline at about 9:45 PM the night before, then later found abandoned just blocks away from the shooting on the 1800 block of Kennedy Avenue.
Police say it happened in a back alley behind a house where some teens often hang out. Neighbors say that's when a car drove up, shot at people several times and drove off.
Two teen girls were shot multiple times, a 17 year old and a 19 year old.
They were taken to Genesis Illini Hospital, one for non-life threatening injuries, the other for serious injuries. Hospital officials say the emergency department was locked down for over two hours as a precaution. One of the girls was later airlifted to a Peoria hospital.
"All of a sudden you heard POW POW POW POW POW!" Resident Lois Johnson says, "I was like, what was that?"
It's what residents woke up to at two in the morning. Neighbors say they heard seven gunshots in this back alley, right in their backyard.
"I woke up at 5:30 this morning there was a crime scene unit up front," Neighbor Keri Walters says, "A bullet was in the middle of the street and they were marking it."
"That was too close to home, too close to home for that," Johnson says.
Witnesses say they saw sparks on the ground and what sounded like firecrackers, but once everything settled, it was clear what happened.
"They just came by between two different alleys and just started shooting," Walters says, "A couple of female friends of theirs got hit pretty hard."
"I was just outside at 1:45 before that happened, if I'd stayed outside a little bit longer it would've been over with," she says.
Though police tell us they've had a few calls and disturbances in this neighborhood before, residents say they don't have problems like this, and families and kids often come out in this alley to hang out in the summer.
"They ride up and down this alley on their bikes, playing basketball right there in the alley," Johnson says.
"Everybody parks out there, we have cookouts," Walters adds.
While some say this incident is keeping them inside.
"A lot of people already said they're probably not going to be outside a lot during the night," Walters says.
Others say it's not enough to keep them scared in their own homes.
"We live everyday for everyday, god has got everybody planned so whatever happens happens, we're not going to stop our daily stuff for just that incident," Johnson says.
If you have any information on this case, you can contact East Moline Police at (309) 752-1550 or Crimestoppers at (309) 762-9500.
