'Brazen' NE Shootings Stun District Officials

The resident did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals.

A security guard at the complex said he had feared more violence after unknown men exchanged gunfire in a parking lot there Friday night, damaging cars but not wounding anyone.

"It is something that will probably be ongoing," said the guard, Rodney Malone.

Police said they had received no report of a Friday night shooting.

Edgewood Terrace, a complex of subsidized public and private housing, was nicknamed "Little Beirut" in the mid-1980s for its violence, chaos and dilapidated condition. But after a 10-year, $76 million rehabilitation project was completed in 2003, it was considered a success story.

Now, residents say, crime has returned. A year ago, an adult and a 14-year-old boy were shot in a courtyard there. In May, a 15-year-old and three other people were wounded by gunfire on a playground. Last month, police killed a man at the complex after he pointed a gun at them.

In the latest incident, a group of residents and their visitors were outside the red-brick apartment building late Saturday when two men approached, according to witnesses and police. At least one of the men opened fire, they said.

"Everyone started running. They yelled, 'Get the kids!' " said the resident who did not want to be identified. Adults grabbed children who had been playing on the sidewalk and on a small patch of grass.

Harris said his wife, Nikea, threw herself against her 3-year-old. A bullet tore through her thigh and into the girl's back, Harris said.

Malone, the security guard, heard the shooting from a few buildings away. It sounded like a semiautomatic pistol, said the guard, who was a weapons specialist in the Army years ago. He and several other guards raced to the scene.

"It was very chaotic," he said, with people crying and yelling. "A lot of people were saying, 'Oh my God!' "

Among the victims treated at hospitals and released were a 7-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. Jemila Harris and an unidentified 34-year-old man, who was also shot in the back, are still being treated, police said.

The shooting was so wild that one bullet smashed through the window of a third-story apartment, leaving a hole the size of a dinner plate.

Across the city, there have been fewer shootings this year than during the same period last year, police said. But homicides are up by about 5 percent, with 104 this year. Concern about crime spiked this month after 11 people were wounded in a string of shootings east of the Anacostia River.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced yesterday that she was beefing up patrols in the Edgewood neighborhood and that officers will be going door-to-door seeking information about the crime.

The Edgewood shootings occurred a day after law enforcement officers helped throw a peaceful community event -- a block party -- at the site as part of the surge in police presence.