CBS New York put up a somewhat peculiar story late Wednesday night about a spate of random drive-by paintball shootings in Queens. The breathless tone of the story doesn’t match the crime. CBS frames it as a “terrifying,” DC sniper-style crime spree while burying the lede, which is that a 17-year-old boy suffered a “serious eye injury” from a paintball. I feel like that’s more important than some lady’s screen getting broken?
The story begins:
“Paintball guns are supposed to be used for a game, but whoever has been leaving splatters on cars and homes in Queens is now pulling the trigger on people.
As CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported, the paintball assailants have already caused at least one serious injury.
‘All of the sudden, I heard a very loud pounding,’ said Wendy Keiser-O’Neill.”
The expression is “all of a sudden.”
“The pounding turned out to be nearly 10 shots fired with a paintball gun at the North Presbyterian Church in Flushing, Queens, as Keiser-O’Neill worked inside on the night of Monday, June 1. Photos captured the mess of blue paint left behind.”
A church! Heathens!
“’It was a splattering all over the door,” she said. “It wasn’t even like they were trying to do a target.”
Keiser-O’Neill’s car was parked out front, and was also hit.
‘Just to think that somebody was just shooting — randomly shooting at targets — it makes you feel very scared and unsafe,’ she said.”
In CBS’ report, a Whitestone resident named Kimberly Leone says, “it does make me think, what’s going to happen next?” Well, there are three possibilities. One is that the paintball shooters will switch to real guns and start mass-murdering people. The second is that they will get caught. The third is that they’ll get bored and stop.
When people die from paintball, it’s because of equipment malfunction. Hopefully the teen who got hit in the eye makes a full recovery. And whoever is shooting paintballs needs to knock it off. But CBS also needs to chill out.
(Photo: Lori Ho)
