Woman holding child wounded, one of three overnight shooting victims in Fresno

A woman holding a child was among three people wounded in two separate shootings minutes apart Thursday night in southeast Fresno, police said.

The woman was shot just before 10 p.m. in a home on Sierra Vista Avenue just north of Kings Canyon Road, police Lt. Anthony DeWall said. Officers alerted by a ShotSpotter gunfire detection system found the woman with a non-life-threatening graze wound. The child was unharmed.

According to DeWall, it appeared that the bullet had passed through a portion of the house, causing the bullet to slow down before striking the woman.

Officers were uncertain what led to the shooting but found multiple bullet casings on the street outside.

Around 9:30 p.m. officers received reports from the area of Belmont Avenue and Orchard Street of two shooting victims, a man wounded in the lower body and a man shot in the upper body. The men were taken to Community Regional Medical Center where they were being treated for non-life-threatening woulds.

According to DeWall, witnesses saw the two men standing outside of an apartment complex when a black SUV passed southbound on Orchard. The occupants of the vehicle and the two men began firing at each other. The vehicle fled the scene.

DeWall said it does not appear that the two shootings are connected.

This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 11:53 PM.