Res­i­dents of Bagatelle, Diego Mar­tin, are brac­ing them­selves for a resur­gence of gun vi­o­lence, fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s at­tempt­ed mur­der of a res­i­dent which re­sult­ed in his 12-year-old daugh­ter be­ing shot.

The child was list­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion yes­ter­day.

The shoot­ing, which oc­curred at 8.10 pm, left sev­er­al peo­ple ap­pre­hen­sive that an “an­swer back” would lead to more vi­o­lence and blood­shed in the com­mu­ni­ty, which was said to have been “qui­et” for the past sev­er­al months.

Po­lice re­ports stat­ed that the in­tend­ed tar­get ap­peared to be a 39-year-old elec­tri­cian of Bagatelle Road, Diego Mar­tin. It was re­port­ed that the man had just pulled in­to his dri­ve­way when a masked gun­man ap­proached and opened fire on him.

Po­lice said as he backed out of the dri­ve­way and at­tempt­ed to speed off, the gun­man stood in the mid­dle of the road and con­tin­ued shoot­ing.

When he checked on his daugh­ter, who had been in the front pas­sen­ger seat, the fa­ther re­alised she had been shot about the body.

The fa­ther at­tempt­ed to head to the hos­pi­tal but was forced to stop along the Diego Mar­tin High­way, near the Crys­tal Stream traf­fic lights, due to a flat tyre.

The man con­tact­ed the po­lice and re­spond­ing of­fi­cers from the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion and the Four Roads CID ren­dered as­sis­tance. They took the in­jured girl and her fa­ther to the St James In­fir­mary (Med­ical Com­plex), where she was sta­bilised be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Mt Hope Pae­di­atric Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

In an up­date yes­ter­day, po­lice said the girl’s con­di­tion was crit­i­cal, as she had suf­fered a gun­shot wound to the right shoul­der and two bul­let frag­ments were found lodged in her body, which was seen via X-ray.

Foren­sic ev­i­dence col­lect­ed at the scene in­clud­ed 12 nine-mil­lime­tre spent shell cas­ings.

Fear­ful of what would fol­low as a re­sult of Wednes­day’s shoot­ing, one woman yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that “the area will be hot­ting back up now”.

When asked to spec­u­late about what could have caused the at­tack, she said, “I have no idea. I don’t know.”

The woman de­scribed the fam­i­ly as qui­et.

“I liv­ing close by and you nev­er hear that man’s voice.”

She added that the fam­i­ly kept to them­selves and was not a both­er to any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“We don’t see or hear that lit­tle girl. She doesn’t be out­side. If I see the moth­er in a line-up, I can’t pick her out,” the res­i­dent said.

The woman ad­mit­ted that the in­ci­dent left her trau­ma­tised. She said she heard the gun­shots ring­ing out on Wednes­day but not­ed no­body in the area ven­tured out. (ALP)