A celebration at Charlotte, North Carolina’s new Buddhist temple almost ended with homicide by gun on July 4, WSOC-TV first reported. That evening, Brandon Yam was struck in the top of the head by a random bullet, which Charlotte Mecklenburg police think may have been fired in the air by someone celebrating Independence Day nearby.
According to the victim’s 17-year-old son, Randy Yam:
We heard a ?pop? and I turned around and my dad was just frozen.
Yam survived and is still hospitalized, but is partially paralyzed, unable to move one side of his body, according to his son. The bullet has yet to be removed from his skull. At the time of the shooting, Yam was cooking food for sale from a tent at the festival.
That ?celebratory gunfire? is suspected to be the cause of his father’s shooting only adds insult to injury, the teenage son finds.
Why would you shoot a gun in the middle of nowhere at random without thinking that it might land and hit someone?
Local police are still looking for the person who fired the weapon.
Celebratory gunfire on holidays is illegal in at least some states, with charges ranging from misdemeanor to felony, but it still happens. It has occurred at other 4th of July events, as well. On July 4, 2013, a 7-year-old boy was killed by a falling bullet in Chesterfield, Virginia; on 2012’s Independence Day, a Michigan State graduate student died in Lansing of the same cause.
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