Six-Year-Old Girl and Parents Shot After Man Got Angry at Basketball Rolling Into His Yard, Family Says

Gastonia, North Carolina police are searching for a man who allegedly got angry and shot a six-year-old girl and her parents when a basketball rolled into his yard, per Queen City News.

24-year-old Robert Louis Singletary is accused of shooting and injuring three people after a basketball rolled down the street and into his yard. Singletary angrily reacted to the incident and fired at a neighbor, and later fired at six-year-old Kinsley White as she ran away with her father William White. Both were shot and admitted to a nearby hospital. The six-year-old has since been released from the hospital, but her father is still receiving treatment for his injuries. Her mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, was grazed by a bullet in the altercation, while a fourth person was shot at but escaped with no injuries.

“He came out with a gun, he started shooting,” Kinsley said. “Hope my daddy is okay.”

In an interview with WSOC-TV, Hilderbrand said her husband was shot in the back in their front year while attempting to draw gunfire away from the children Singletary shot at. “I believe he would have got me and my husband too,” added Carolyn Hilderbrand, Kinsley’s grandmother. “He just run out of bullets.”

Singletary is facing four counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of possession of a firearm by a felon, and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. Last year, Singletary was charged with intent to inflict serious injury, kidnapping, and communicating threats in the assault of his 21-year-old girlfriend.