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Mostly Cloudy Stray bullet strikes 4-year-old boy
Long Beach police arrest suspect in Channel Park shooting; child's injuries minor
Long Beach police arrested the suspected gunman who opened fire during an argument outside the Channel Park Homes last Friday that left a 4-year-old boy injured by an errant bullet.
Police Commissioner Mike Tangney said that police had arrested 20-year-old Obe Isaac, a an East Pine Street resident and former Long Beach High School football player, late Friday night.
According to police, the incident occurred at 1:20 p.m. in the north section of the apartment complex on Oak Court. Police said that the round and some debris grazed the boy's ear, and that his injuries were not life-threatening. The shooting set off a massive search for the gunman, in an area where gun violence has been a concern.
LBPD Sgt. Richard DePalma said that the incident began witha verbal dispute between two men outside the housing unit. Isaac allegedly opened fire, missing his intended target, and the bullet entered the ground-floor apartment where the boy, Treyshawn Stephens, was playing.
“Two men were in an argument, and one shot once or twice,” DePalma said. “The errant bullet entered the rear wall of an apartment, went through an interior wall in the apartment, and grazed the ear of a 4-year-old boy.”
DePalma said that the boy's father rushed him to CityMD on West Beech Street, and he was taken by ambulance to Nassau University Medical Center with minor injuries.
“I heard the glass breaking,” the boy’s father, Tremayne Stephens, told CBS News. “The next thing you know, he was bleeding. Thank God it didn’t hit him, you know, a couple of inches higher — it could have been something else.”
During the search for the suspect, a section of the Channel Park Homes was cordoned off with police tape.
