Jessica Sampson, 18, said she remembers seeing fights and arguments around her Denver apartment almost every day last summer.
Sampson and several other residents of the Dispersed North East housing projects, commonly known by locals as the “APs,” said gang-related violence is common in the area where two sisters were injured in shootings Wednesday afternoon.
The two girls – Karina Padilla, 14, and Jayzmine Padilla, 6 – were in fair condition at Children’s Hospital late Wednesday.
“The violence happens mostly in the summertime,” Sampson said. “That’s when everything happens, because everyone is outside.”
This summer the violence could escalate, Sampson worries.
Two weeks ago, Jennifer Mitchell said, gunshots were fired into her apartment at the APs, shattering the sliding glass back door and a window.
On Wednesday the door was boarded up with plywood.
The shots, Mitchell said, were fired from the same kind of car seen during the shooting Wednesday – a gray Dodge Intrepid.
“It’s the usual – the Bloods and the Crips,” Mitchell said, referring to two gangs in the neighborhood.
Police late Wednesday did not have data available on gang activity in the area.
Beyonca Parker, 26, who has been living at the APs for about six months, said she saw the car stop in the complex’s parking lot and watched as at least three men in the car stared at two men standing near the two girls who were shot.
The two men, who she said looked like they were in the 20s, yelled “What’s up?” at the men in the car.
The men in the car responded with a series of gunshots, Parker said.
Mayra Sandoval, 14, said she was playing in a yard on the corner of East 37th Avenue and Elizabeth Street when she saw the men drive off laughing.
“They all had black bands around their heads,” Sandoval said.
Staff writer Katherine Crowell can be reached at kcrowell@denverpost.com.
