A 7-year-old girl is in critical condition following a shooting at a church in London on Saturday, police said. The attack also left five injured.
The faithful, who came to attend a mass in homage to a mother and her daughter who died in November, fled screaming from this Catholic church in the capital, when the shots rang out.
“Initial investigations indicate that the shots were fired from a moving vehicle which then drove away from the scene,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
“I heard this loud bang and thought it wasn’t normal, and the next minute everyone was screaming and screaming,” a neighbor told the PA news agency.
Release of doves
As well as the seven-year-old girl, another 12-year-old girl and four women were injured in the shooting near busy Euston station. The second was able to leave the hospital following being treated for minor leg injuries.
Four other women, aged 21 to 54, whose lives are not in danger, remain in hospital, police said.
A witness told the MyLondon news site that the shots were fired as mourners who had attended the mass watched the release of doves that followed.
The priest in charge of the office told the PA news agency that it was a mass in homage to a 20-year-old woman and her mother, who died a month apart in November, the first from leukemia and the second from thrombosis.
/ATS