A Pottstown, Pennsylvania family is grateful no one was hurt after a hail of bullets struck their home, an attack the homeowner believes was carried out by teenagers who have been accused of bullying her young daughter at school.
According to NBC New York, the eighth grader was eating dinner with her family when some 15 bullets flew through the home Sunday evening. Remarkably, no one was hurt during the incident. "As soon as my niece and kids came in here, bullets started flying," Marie Samba, the mother of the 13-year-old girl, told the outlet.
The middle schooler had been bullied by several girls at school ever since the family moved to Pottstown, a small borough some 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The mother doesn't think the shooting was a coincidence. "My 13-year-old has a hit on her, from a bully?" Samba said. "What possesses a grown person to take a 13-year-old’s word to shoot up a house full of people?"
John, director of community relations for the Pottstown School District, told NBC Philadelphia that information gathered from the investigation supports the accusation that the shooting is linked to the bullying of Samba's daughter. He also said that the group of girls and the 8th grader have been fighting for "several months." Armato told the outlet that schools can only do so much to curb bullying, through anti-bullying discussions and seminars, but "they are not issues that can be singularly addressed by the schools, they are community-wide issues."
The Pottstown School District released a statement regarding the attack. "We have been alerted to a situation involving eighth-grade students which allegedly included the use of weapons over the weekend," the statement read, according to The Mercury. "We are fully cooperating with the Pottstown Police Department and have taken extra precautions to ensure the safety of our students and staff."
