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Eid shooting witness talks about terrifying events
A woman at the Eid event describes the chaos of the shooting and the terror of trying to find her family in the bedlam after the shooting began.
WEST PHILADELPHIA - Amid the chaos of the shooting at the Eid event in West Philadelphia, one woman described, in detail, the terrifying moments as the gunfire unfolded, only to learn that a family member had been shot.
Najah Bey was with all of her family at the mosque on the 4700 block of Wyalusing Avenue, Wednesday afternoon.
She described the early portion of the day and the following chaos this way, "We were just having a celebration for the Eid, something we do every year. We fast for 30 days and then we have a celebration. We were enjoying ourselves. The kids was running around, everyone was eating. And then, about 2:30, we heard shots. Everyone just started running and scattering around. You hear babies crying, people crying. People on the ground and it was crazy. And, then about a couple seconds later, another round of shots going off and people were just running and running."
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Bey then went on to say hundreds and, perhaps, thousands of people were attending the event, which began as prayer in the morning and after the morning prayer, the festivities started.
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FOX 29’s Chris O’Connell asked Bey to describe the celebration, the day and what it means to her faith. She replied, "This is our faith. We have an Eid every year. After we fast for 30 days, we have a celebration. And, that’s what we were having - a celebration and we don’t know who was shooting, where the shots came from, but people started shooting and everyone just started running. And, you have babies, elderly people. Everybody was just there to enjoy themselves. And, now we end up at the emergency room to make sure everything is fine with the people that were shot."
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Bey went on to talk about the fear of not being able to find her son in the ensuing panic of people running from the gunshots and how terrified she was in not finding her son. "I couldn’t find him. And, it was very, very scary that I could not find my son. It was very, very, very scary."
O’Connell then asked, "Your whole family was there?"
"Yes," was Bey’s reply. "I was very scared."
Another reporter then asked, "Your son’s in the hospital?"
"No, not my son. My little cousin’s there."
"How old is he?"
"He’s 23," Bey replied.
"And how is he doing?" the reporter questioned.
"We don’t know yet. But, when he left, he was talking to us. He was alert. He was calm. We applied pressure and they put him right in the cop car and drove him here," she answered.
Bey went on to describe her emotions and more of the chaos, "I was crying. I’m not crying now, but I was crying. I rushed here. I put as many people as I could in my car so we could just get off the scene. It was very scary to see all the people lying down on the ground in fear for their lives."
She went on to describe the city, in the moment, "It’s sad in Philadelphia, it’s very sad. You can’t even have a celebration without having to worry about somebody getting shot."