Eight-year-old girl says Nationals Park was her ‘second shooting’ in heartbreaking video

Three people were injured as fans ran for their lives outside stadium

Nathan Place
New York
Tuesday 20 July 2021 07:42 BST
Eight-year-old girl says Nationals gunfight was her 'second shooting'
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Louise Thomas

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After a shooting outside a DC baseball game left fans running for their lives, one survivor calmly told a reporter she’d been through it all before. She was eight years old.

“It was my second shooting, so I was kind of prepared because I always am expecting something to happen,” Faris Nunn, eight, told WUSA9.

Faris and her family were at the game at Nationals Park in Washington, DC on Saturday when they heard gunshots from a nearby gate.

“I saw people looking that way,” the young girl said. “And I didn’t know what was going on until I heard someone say get out, so I just started going under the seat.”

Three people were injured in the shooting, which police said was a gunfight between people in two vehicles outside the stadium. The Nunns were uninjured.

Though she’s less than a decade old, it was indeed Faris’ second shooting. Her mother, Lora Nunn, confirmed that the girl had also lived through the fatal shooting of a man near their toddler playgroup in November.

The DC mother says she’s done her best to comfort her daughter.

“We just tried to reassure her that this is not normal, that nobody’s targeting her, that it’s – it’s just a really stressful time right now with the pandemic,” Ms Nunn told WUSA9.

Gun violence has recently skyrocketed in the United States, killing 43,561 Americans in 2020. According to the Gun Violence Archive, that makes 2020 the deadliest year in the past two decades.

In her tweet of the footage, the WUSA9 reporter who interviewed Faris noted her own horror that such a young child has lived through two shootings.

“Sober reminder of what far too many kids in DC face daily,” Jess Arnold wrote. “This should not be normal.”

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