CHARLOTTE
A 15-year-old girl heading home from school Wednesday was shot after police say a man involved in a nearby fight fired several shots into a crowd.
A police spokesman said the sidewalk on Conference Drive near Independence Boulevard was packed with students a few minutes after East Mecklenburg High School's final bell rang, The Charlotte Observer reported.
The girl, whose injuries are not life-threatening, was hit in the leg near BJ's wholesale club, less than one-half mile from the school, said Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Robert Fey. No one else was hit.
Crime scene tape cordoned off a large part of the shopping center's parking lot as homicide investigators and other officers gathered.
Police say they received a call just before 2:30 p.m. about a group of men fighting in the parking lot.
"They were just yelling. I would say probably in their middle teens, later teens," Ralph Ensminger, who saw the fight, told the Observer's news partner, NewsChannel 36.
"I thought it was horseplay, and then when I saw the shirts get ripped off and a few made contact with the faces, I'm like, 'Hey, wait a minute. This is the real thing."'
As officers headed to the fight, someone called 911 to report a person shot at the same location.
Witnesses told investigators that during the fight, one man went to a car and got a gun. He came back, pointing the gun toward his adversaries, as students walked by. He fired several shots.
When police arrived, they found the sophomore girl lying on the sidewalk. They have not released her name because she's a minor. Police were unsure whether any students were involved in the fight.
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