The family of a 12-year-old boy killed late Friday in a shooting at a party in an abandoned National City house is asking for the community’s help to find those responsible for the crime.
National City police said that Elijah Smith was killed in the shooting, which occurred at a property on N Avenue near 8th Street, that left four others injured.
“We just want justice,” his older sister, Oakley Smith, said at a news conference joined by her mother Sofia Alvarez-Smith outside of the National City police headquarters. “For not just him. There were five victims.”
The family said they did not know how Elijah, who was home with his sister, got to the party or who he went with. Alvarez-Smith said she was out of town, a few hours from home, when the incident occurred.
She shared her final conversation with her youngest son. “We said bye to each other,” she said. “I said ‘bye, I’ll be back, be good, stay home.’ He was supposed to be home, he wasn’t supposed to leave the house.”
Alvarez-Smith said Elijah was only allowed to go to friends’ houses, the movies or the mall, and she always dropped him off and picked him up.
Elijah was a seventh grader at Lemon Grove Academy Middle, the family said. They remembered him as “an innocent soul,” and someone who “was always trying to make people laugh.”
Multiple 911 calls came in about 11:50 p.m. Friday reporting shots fired at the property. National City police arrived to find more than 100 people at the party — mostly teens and young adults — and asked for assistance from neighboring police agencies for crowd control and to secure the scene.
The shooter or shooters fled by the time law enforcement arrived. As of Sunday, there was no one in custody.
Police said the shooting was the result of a physical altercation between two groups, and that they were still looking for and trying to identify witnesses. Four of the five who were shot were males under 18. Those who were injured were reported in stable condition, police said Sunday.
Alvarez-Smith pleaded for an end to gun violence.
“It’s not fair that I have to bury my 12-year-old son because some people think that it’s so easy to just grab a gun and just shoot somebody,” she said. “It’s not right, and it needs to stop already.”
Anyone with information about the shooting was asked to call police at 619-336-4411 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477 or sdcrimestoppers.org.
“Any little detail that they know can help us,” said the boy’s sister.
The family created a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses. “Wrong place, wrong time made us lose our handsome baby,” the page reads.
“My parents are going to be mourning and grieving so they are not going to be able to work,” Smith said. “We need to put him to rest with what he deserves. He deserves the best.”
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