(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – A convicted felon has surrendered to North Carolina police after allegedly shooting a little girl and her parents over a basketball. It has emerged that he was somehow released after a recent sledgehammer attack.
24-year-old Robert Louis Singletary allegedly opened fire on Tuesday against a family in Gaston County, North Carolina, after the children’s basketball rolled into his year, Newsmax reported, citing WSOC-TV.
The furious suspect first ran into the street and shot at a neighbor but then came back and started shooting 6-year-old Kinsley White, her father, William White, and her mother, Ashley Hilderbrand.
The father reportedly tried to draw the gunshots toward himself. He was shot in the back and remains hospitalized, while his daughter was injured by bullet fragments in her face and had to get stitches. A bullet grazed his wife.
“We don’t even know the man. Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid’s dad?” six-year-old Kinsley told the TV station.
“He looked at my husband and my daughter and told them, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ “Hilderbrand recounted.
Gaston County Police have offered a $1,000 reward for help finding Singletary [he has since surrendered]. The shooter has been charged with “four counts of first-degree attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.”
“I want to say to the people of Gaston County — this sort of violence will not stand,” Police Chief Stephen Zill declared in a statement.
However, it has emerged that Singletary had a conviction record and was also recently arrested for striking his girlfriend with a sledgehammer over the head – though it remained unclear why he was on the loose when he shot at his neighbors.
In 2017, Singletary was convicted of “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury charge” over a Halloween 2016 incident. He was released from prison in September 2020.
However, on December 2, 2022, the ex-convict used a mini-sledgehammer to bash his 21-year-old girlfriend’s head inside his apartment.
Despite the injury, he forced his girlfriend to help him clean up the blood for two hours. Once she was allowed to leave, she called 911 and drove to the hospital.
As a result, Singletary was nabbed on December 7 and charged with “assault with intent to inflict serious injury, kidnapping, and communicating threats.”
The New York Post reports North Carolina’s police records show he was held on a $250,000 secured bond, but “it remains unclear if and when he posted bail.”
The Gaston County District Attorney’s Office is yet to respond to a request for comment on the matter.
Police in Gaston County, North Carolina, are looking for a man who allegedly opened fire and shot a 6-year-old girl and her parents after a basketball rolled into his yard earlier this week. https://t.co/gHXFuWR1X7
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) April 20, 2023
