A seven-year-old boy has been stabilized after he was shot inside his Hamilton home on Thursday, police say.
“This is unacceptable. This is a time when our community has to stop and understand what the proliferation of guns are doing in our community,” Hamilton police Deputy Chief Frank Bergen told reporters Thursday night.
“We hear a great deal about the problems within the GTA, and we are now talking about a sidewalk within our community that’s also affected by this.”
Emergency crews were called to a home on Gordon Street, near Gage Avenue North and Barton Street East, just before 7:55 p.m.
Bergen said someone fired a gunshot into the main floor of the house and the boy was struck. No one else was injured during the shooting.
A spokesperson for the Hamilton Paramedic Service told Global News the child was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but Bergen said the child was later upgraded to stable condition.
As of Thursday night, police didn’t release suspect information or information on the circumstances leading up to the shooting.
Bergen said officers are searching for a vehicle, but he wouldn’t elaborate on the vehicle description. He said no one was taken into custody as of Thursday night.
“We have all layers of our organization involved in this investigation,” Bergen said.
He said there have been three instances in Hamilton reported so far this year of shots being fired and that the boy was the first victim struck. Bergen said in 2019 there were 23 victims were injured in shootings.
Tammy Levine, who said she lives on Gordon Street, tried to get back home Thursday night as her street was blocked off by police.
“We haven’t had anything like this go on in this neighbourhood,” she said, adding she was surprised by the shooting close to home but not as part of the broader region when it comes to gun violence.
“It’s sad, it’s very sad … It’s scary. I’m not going to sleep tonight.”
Meanwhile, any witnesses who didn’t speak with police, or anyone with information or video, was asked to call police at 905-546-4925 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.
“This is when the public needs to come together and make sure that if you’ve seen anything, that you say something,” Bergen said.