Danger? After Church Burnings, Self-Immolations, Doctors’ Deaths, Shark Attacks, and Other Mayhem?

 by: twilight language

We don’t know what will happen on July 4th. The mainstream media has been beating the drums all week that a possible terrorist event – ISIS maybe, a homegrown individual or group maybe – will occur on Saturday, July 4th, in the United States of America, on our Independence Day.

Americans across the country have big plans for the 4th of July, but the FBI and Homeland Security are warning Americans of potential “lone wolf” attacks this holiday weekend.
The FBI’s most recent bulletin warns specifically of “lone wolf” attacks, which are attacks carried out by homegrown extremists. However, they also said no credible threats have been made so far. Source.

Maybe, maybe not. It almost seems as if CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and other news outlets will be disappointed if nothing happens. It’s a weird feeling out there.Update: “FBI Cancels ALL VACATIONS For Agents Over 4th of July Weekend.”

Look, many of us in the sync, twilight language, conspiracy, law enforcement, psychology, and Fortean worlds are picking up on these times being especially bizarre. There is literally a list of randomly separate incidents that are very disquieting. I’ve been gathering these tallies, and I have even made predictions based on future trends reinforced in past patterns.
I am certainly guilty of this. I felt the end of June was giving out all kinds of signals. The anniversary syndrome told me that June 24th might have a little bump of incidents. I wrote:
“Not sure if it is a fire, a ufologist’s death, an assassination, another church shooting, a form of mass violence or what, but something is in the air.” ~ June 24: A “Hot” Date in 2015?Twilight Language, June 19, 2015.
What happened?It appears there was a significant UFO-related death on June 24, 2015. Former Congressman Mario Biaggi died. He had assisted ufologists with their UFO disclosure movement. (See here.)

Additionally, beginning after I penned the “prediction,” African-American churches, in the South, began burning. This was said to be directly related to the killing of 9 members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on June 17, 2015.

Here is one map of seven of these fires:
Here’s a list (of seven in the South, one in Ohio):College Hill Seventh-day Adventist — Knoxville, Tennessee, June 22, 2015.
The Knoxville Fire Department is investigating the fire, stating it was arson.

God’s Power Church of Christ —Macon, Georgia, June 23, 2015.
Macon-Bibb County public information stated that the blaze was being investigated as arson.

Fruitland Presbyterian Church — Gibson County, Tennessee, June 23, 2015.
State bomb and arson investigators determined a lightning strike hit the church steeple at about 8:30 pm.

Briar Creek Road Church — Charlotte, North Carolina, June 24, 2015.
The Charlotte Fire Department ruled the flame was arson. It is worthy of noting that it was the June 24th fire that raised everyone’s awareness that there seemed to be a “wave” of church burnings. The photograph of that fire was widely disseminated.

Glover Grove Baptist — Gloverville-Warrenville, South Carolina, June 26, 2015.
Officials have not yet determined a cause for the fire.

Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church — Tallahassee, Florida, June 26, 2015.
Tallahassee Fire Department and State Fire Marshal investigators believe the fire was caused by an electrical wire. Investigations are still under way.

College Heights Baptist Church – Elyria, Ohio – June 27, 2015.
Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church — Greeleyville, South Carolina, June 30, 2015. Williamsburg County Fire department said the cause of the blaze was unclear, although lightning is being blamed in recent news stories.

The point is not so much that all of these fires are arsons, but in a Fortean point of view, it is a cluster of curious church fires, whether they be human arsons or God’s arson, so-to-speak. The wave is noticeable.

[We need a good list of all the locations that Confederate generals and soldier statues have been defaced, as well. No one has compiled one of those. I have mentioned this has been happening to memorials and statues of John Hunt Morgan (see here), as well as John Calhoun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston (see here). But I’m sure it has been more widespread. The lexilink of Morgan-Fayette grows more understood, more powerful, more synchromystic.]

===Staying with fires here, June 2015 was a month of self-immolations and attempts at fire suicides.

June 1, 2015 – Shahjahanpur, India-basedFREELANCE JOURNALIST Jagendra Singh was allegedly set on fire on June 1 during a police raid at his house at Awas Vikas colony in Sadar Bazar area of Shahjananupr. He died during treatment at a hospital in Lucknow on June 8. He was doing a series of articles exposing illegal mining operations and land-grabbing. Source.

June 4, 2015 – In Austin, Texas, Andrew Guerrero, 57, using his lighter, set himself on fire in his car, at a gasoline station. Austin Police officers pulled him free, and he is at a burn center. It is uncertain if he will survive. Source.June 10, 2015 – In central London, UK, a man attempted to self-immolate outside BBC Broadcasting House. He doused himself in petrol, but was prevented from igniting himself. Source.

June 27, 2015 – The media circulated a year-old story of the self-immolation on June 23, 2014, of 79-year-old retired Methodist minister, Charles Moore, who drove his car to a local strip mall, exited the vehicle, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself on fire. His suicide note explained that the self-immolation was an attempt to die a martyr for the black and LGBT communities. Source.

June 30, 2015 – In Japan, on a bullet train, a self-immolation of a suicide victim resulted in two deaths, as another person at the back of the car died from smoke inhalation. The man, identified as Haruo Hayashizaki, a 71-year-old resident of Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was near the entrance doors at the front of the Nozomi 225′s lead car when he poured a flammable liquid from a white plastic tank over his head and set it alight. The woman, identified as Yoshiko Kuwahara, 52, of Yokohama, was found at the opposite end of the first car. She reportedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The Nozomi express, operated by Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), was heading from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka Station. It was between Shin-Yokohama and Odawara stations when a passenger in car No. 1 activated the emergency alarm at around 11:30 a.m., and the driver brought the train to a halt.Source.

Will there be more fire suicides? Certainly. Will those be in the USA? Probably not as many as in Japan and India, this summer and fall.
===Okay, the conspiracy literature is sharing one list we should not ignore. Alternative medicine doctors are dying.

There is a hint showing up in sites such as the Steamshovel Press and The Natural Blaze Newsletterthat “alternative medicine” doctors are turning up mysteriously dead.

On June 19, 2015, controversial autism researcher Jeff Bradstreet, M.D. was found dead. He died of a gunshot wound to his chest, and then allegedly threw himself in a river. Some questioned the claim of suicide. Bradstreet was known as an anti-vaccine advocate. Bradstreet’s son is autistic, which Bradstreet attributed to a vaccination his son was given at age 15 months.

James Jeffrey “Jeff” Bradstreet (born July 6, 1954), was an American doctor, an alternative medicine practitioner, and a former Christian preacher who ran the International Child Development Resource Center in Melbourne, Florida, a medical practice in Buford, Georgia and in Arizona, where he practiced homeopathy. Bradstreet’s body (allegedly deceased from a self-inflicted gun shot to the chest) was found in the Broad River in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina, in June 2015, after his Buford, Georgia, medical office was raided by the Food and Drug Administration. At the time of his death, he lived in Braselton, Georgia and ran his medical practice in Buford.

On June 21, 2015, Father’s Day, Bruce Hedendal, Ph. D. was found dead in his car. No accident. No running motor. He was merely, in his car. A father of six, Dr. Hedendal was at the forefront of chiropractic and functional medicine, high performance nutrition, fitness training and natural hormone therapies. Since 1985, he he has hosted syndicated radio and internet health programs, and had been currently hosting the longest running radio and internet show “Health is Wealth Live.” Like Bradstreet, Hedendal had been in conflict with federal authorities over his “alternative” view of medicine. A “pillar of health,” his death is unexplained.

On June 29, 2015, a popular Estero, Florida “alternative medicine” Dr. Teresa Ann Sievers, 46, was killed. The death has left locals, family, and law enforcement authorities puzzled. Lee County Sheriff’s Office authorities went on Monday, June 29, at 9:45 a.m. to Sievers’ address at 27034 Jarvis Road in Bonita Springs, Florida, after she didn’t arrive at work.

“We don’t know anything but that she was murdered,” said Sievers’ sister, Annie Lisa, 52. She said Sievers, her husband and children had come to Connecticut for a gathering and her sister flew home alone Sunday. Source.

====

We cannot ignore the shark attack mania, either.

There have been a high number of shark attacks during the summer of 2015. The number is large enough for sharks to become a media story. Last time this happened? In which sharks became a media focus? Right before 9/11.

Could 2015 being a “Summer of the Shark” be a cosmic precursor to another 9/11 on 7/4 (which, after all, = 11)?

The synchromystic world started talking about the “shark imagery” back in February 2015.

In 2015, on the Sunday after July 4th, it becomes “Shark Week” on cable television. Few remember that during 2001, the “Summer of the Shark” began on the 4th of July.

Shark attacks generally get more attention by the media than most news. Except for mass shootings, school shootings, workplace violence, and terrorist attacks.

Time Magazine in 2001 acknowledged it was “The Summer of the Shark,” even though statistically, there were less attacks than in some other years.

But there was something more sinister waiting in the wings – 9/11, of course. First, however, another animal got the headlines; the “Summer of the Gator” happened.

In my twilight language book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), I noted the unfolding of the “if it bleeds, it leads” focus on shark and alligator attacks. The media, almost completely, forgot about animal encounters after the Twin Towers came down. Terrorism and war were the new wall-to-wall coverage for months.

+++

Breaking news: After I posted the above about alligator attacks in 2001, J. M. sent me this ~

There was an alligator fatality early Friday morning, July 3, 2015. Tommie Woodward, 28, suffered severe trauma to a limb when he was attacked early Friday morning at the private marina, which is along a bayou extending from the Sabine River near the Louisiana line, Orange, Texas, police Captain Robert Enmon reported. The alligator was estimated to be 11 feet long.

The owners of the marina recently had spotted a large alligator on a few occasions, and put up a sign warning people to stay out of the water, police said. Woodward reportedly when told this, yelled out “F*ck the ‘gators,” and jumped in.
According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the incident was the first fatal attack by an alligator in Texas in about 200 years.

Now word comes from the director of Southern Fried Bigfoot that a violent encounter with an alligator occurred before the fatal incident at Orange, Texas. West of there, 75 miles away, at Charlotte Lake, Cedar Hill Park, Wallisville, Texas, a 13-year-old boy, Kaleb, was swimming near the shore when bitten in the arm and leg by an alligator. The gator also began to pull him under the water. Kaleb’s father, James Hurley, jumped in the water, kicked the alligator off his son, and pulled Kaleb to safety. Both Kaleb and James Hurley are recovering at the hospital. Source.

More news: July 4, 2015. An 8-foot alligator grabbed Mike Karris’ 11-year-old dachshund, Cody, at the boat ramp in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, on Saturday. Karris and his girlfriend were unable to rescue their dog. The last attack on a dog was more than 15 years ago.Source.

+++Now we are back to the sharks. And alligators! What does it mean? Another 9/11. Does Homeland Security, the FBI, and ISIS read the same literature?

====

So let me step back. I’m a Fortean. I have a worldview that looks at events as holistically as possible. The past informs the future.

Charles Fort once wrote of a world sense I share, “My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?”

Decades ago, one of the first science fiction novels to be inspired by Charles Fort was Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier, published in 1939; revised in 1948.

I reminded myself, as I compiled the lists of lists above, that the events of Sinister Barrier took place in 2015.

 
As one modern reviewer of Sinister Barrier noted, “Many pages of the novel record lists of suggestive ‘Fortean phenomena’ culled from 1938 newspapers (the year of composition).”
And critiqued that Russell’s “world of 2015 is still one in which vacuum tubes and switchboards co-exist with gyrocars and pneumatic levitators; aggression by the Asian Combine simply echoes World War II.”
But there are remarkable intrigues, as well. Russell talked about vision-screens above telephones, understood modern forensics, and looked beyond the news of his day – into ours.
Considering the time frame in Sinister Barrier moves from 2014, through 2015, there is even a name game that startled me. It only appears once, but it stands out.
Russell writes of an investigation of a mystery incident, and adds,

A siren wailed along the road outside, died away dismally at the open door. Four police officers entered accompanied by one man in plain clothes. Quietly, without comment, they took out the uniformed corpse, came back for the fallen scientist. He was mouthing noiselessly as they bore him away.
Three of the officers got into the car, drove off. The fourth took his seat at the teletype. The man in plain clothes went up to Laurie.
“I’m Ferguson, the replacement.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

On August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old African-American man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a policeman with the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department. That one event in 2014 definitely was the foundation of events between law enforcement officers and African-American victims in 2015.

Russell even gives dates of events in 2015:

Halfway to the door he emitted a brief gasp, stumbled, fell. His stricken hand clutched the calendar from his desk, dragged it down to the carpet. He sobbed, hugged hands to his heart, lay still. The spark which had motivated him became extinguished. The calendar’s top leaf fluttered in a queer, inexplicable breeze from nowhere. The date was May the seventeenth, 2015. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

So, what happened this year on May 17th? Did you forget already?

On May 17, 2015, nine people were killed and 18 injured, some by law enforcement and others in gunfire exchanges, in a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas.

(Exactly a month later, on June 17, 2015, another nine people were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.)

On May 17, 2015, NYPD officers responded to a 911 call in Briarwood, Queens around 4:00 a.m. There, they found Chinx and another victim in a car at Queens Boulevard and 84th Drive. The other victim was identified as Antar Alziadi. Chinx was transported to Jamaica Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens with gunshot wounds to his torso, where he was pronounced dead, at age 31. Using the stage name Chinx (formerly Chinx Drugz), the American rapper Lionel Pickens (born December 4, 1983) was from Queens, New York.

Another date that the Fortean writer Eric Frank Russell mentions is June 9th:

It was three o’clock in the morning of June the ninth, 2015, and the seldom mentioned but superbly efficient United States Department of Propaganda was working overtime. Its two huge floors in Home Affairs Building were dark, deserted, but half a mile away, hidden in a two-acre basement comprising a dozen great cellars, slaved the department’s complete staff augmented by eighty willing helpers. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell, 1939

So…

On June 9, 2015, the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army claimed it captured a major Syrian Army base known as Brigade 52 in Daraa Governorate.

On June 9, 2015, Robert Alan Diaz, born September 17, 1975, died of unknown causes. He was known by his stage name Pumpkinhead or P.H., was an American rapper and hip hop artist. He grew up in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, New York with his mother and younger sister.

Who knows if it means anything, but the main investigator of Sinister Barrier was obsessed with gathering all matter of material oozing with mystery. He was surrounded with a growing body of strange deaths, even before he understood them.

Bill Graham knew nothing about these earlier tragedies, but he knew about Mayo. He was right on the spot when it happened.
He was strolling along West Fourteenth, New York, when for no particular reason he cast a casual glance up the sheer side of the Martin Building, saw a human figure falling past the twelfth floor. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

What Russell’s hero Graham began to note were “rumors of war, preparations for war, accusations of preparations for war, actual wars, ferocious and bloody; religious revivals, religious riots; financial crises; labor troubles; color rivalries; ideological demonstrations; specious propaganda; murders, massacres, so-called natural disasters, or slaughter in any emotion-arousing form; revolutions and more wars.”

Many suicide victims turn up. Mystery deaths of scientists occur.
Russell understood the copycat effect in 1939:

“The first suicide began them,” Wohl declared. “The rest were imitative.” He handed back the list. “Take a look over police files sometime. You’ll find time after time when murder and suicide were temporarily contagious. One spectacular and well-publicised crime often induces several others of similar type.” ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

A significant city is destroyed.

Silver City was gone; the area it once had occupied was now an enormous scar on the face of Idaho, a five-miles-wide wound dotted with wreckage through which crept, crawled and limped a pathetically small number of survivors. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

The precursors of suicides and mystery deaths painted the canvas that would highlight the future – one of war. Piccadilly, London, was “messed with the blood of forty suicides.”

The red dawn is there. Then come the attacks on Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Madrid is destroyed by an atomic bomb.

An azure sky splashed with pink by the rising sun spewed two thousand thin streamers of flame from the invisibility of its upper reaches. The streamers curved downward, whitening with condensation. Thickening as they lost altitude, they resolved themselves into mighty back-blasts of strange, yellow stratosphere planes.

Below lay Seattle, a few early citizens on its broad streets, a few wispy columns of smoke rising from stoked furnaces. Many amazed eyes turned to the sky, many still-sleeping heads tossed on their pillows as the aerial armada howled across Puget Sound, swooped over Seattle’s roofs.

The bulleting rush brought the howl up in pitch to a shrill scream as the yellow horde rocketed over the rooftops, the badge of a flaming sun showing on the underside of each stubby wing. Black, ominous objects excreted in pairs and waggled downward from sleek, streamlined fuselages, fell for a hushed age, buried themselves in the buildings beneath. The buildings promptly disrupted in a mad, swirling melee of flame, fumes, bricks and splintered timbers.

For six hellish minutes Seattle shuddered and shook to an uninterrupted series of tremendous explosions. Then, like wraiths from the void, the yellow two thousand vanished into the stratosphere whence they had come.

Four hours later, while Seattle’s streets still sparkled with shards of glass and her living still moaned amid the ruins, the invaders reappeared. Vancouver suffered this time. A dive, six minutes of inferno, then away. Slowly, lackadaisically, their condensing blast-streaks dissipated in the upper regions, while beneath lay pitted avenues, strewn business blocks, crushed homes around which wandered silent, thin-lipped men, sobbing women, screaming children, some whole, some not. Here and there a voice shrieked and shrieked and shrieked like one of the damned doing his damnedest in a world of the damned. Here and there a sharp report brought quietness and peace to someone urgently in need of both. A little lead pill was welcome medicine to the partly disemboweled.

It was coincidentally with that evening’s similar and equally effective attack on San Francisco that the United States government officially identified the aggressors. The markings on the attackers’ machines should have been sufficient indication, but this evidence had seemed too unreasonable to credit. Besides, officialdom had not forgotten the days when it had been considered expedient to strike blows under any flag but one’s own.

Nevertheless, it was true. The enemy was the Asian Combine, with whom the United States was supposed to be on friendliest terms. ~ Sinister Barrier, Eric Frank Russell

Will there be a terrorist attack on the 4th of July in 2015? No one knows. Someone seems to think so. And CNN and Fox News will cover it live.


28 injured at Calif. fireworks show

Associated Press

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — More than two dozen people were injured when a wood platform holding live fireworks tipped over, sending the pyrotechnics into a crowd at an annual 4th of July show northwest of Los Angeles, authorities said Friday.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 revelers were settling into their seats for the fireworks extravaganza at a Simi Valley park Thursday night when the spectacle of lights that were supposed to be launched in the sky never took off. A bright plume of red and white bursts spread across the ground, injuring 28 people and sending others fleeing for safety.

Police were investigating what led to the explosion, but said early indications show a platform designed and built to hold the fireworks gave way.

“For some unknown reasons the structure that holds these ordinances collapsed and caused them to be firing into the crowd,” said Simi Valley police Cmdr. Stephanie Shannon.

Four people were listed in serious condition, but their injuries were not life-threatening. Another 16 were taken to area hospitals with minor to moderate injuries. The remainder were treated at the park where emergency crew, already on hand as a safety precaution, set up a triage area.

A video clip show on KCAL-TV shows a pair of firework blasts at or near the ground. Another clip posted on YouTube shot from a distance shows three ground-level bursts. The fireworks continue for almost another minute before stopping.

“There was a big boom, everybody started running down the street, people were screaming,” Justice Allen, 17, of Simi Valley told the Los Angeles Times. “Everybody was just terrified. People hid in bushes.”

Authorities estimate people were about 900 feet away from where the fireworks were being launched. One police officer who ran into the crowd when the blasts occurred had shrapnel tear through his leather belt and his clothing, Shannon said. He had minor injuries to his back.

Shannon said most people responded admirably and left in an orderly fashion. A bomb squad was at the park to deactivate the remainder of the fireworks.

She added the fireworks primarily shot in one direction.

“They are going to travel the same distance across the park as they would in the air,” Shannon said. “The ones that had actually ignited that had to run their fuse were going directly into the crowd.”

The annual July Fourth celebration has been sponsored by the city and the local Rotary Club for the past 43 years. Shannon said she had no information about the company hired for the fireworks show.

Simi Valley, home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, is about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

4th of July accidents: Celebrations tempered by tragedy

This is the worst 4 of July Celebration  on record and hurricane Arthur has not unleash is destructive power as yet please stay safe my friend

As Americans celebrated Independence Day, Fourth of July festivities and fireworks displays around the country were marred by accidents, injuries and even deaths.

From fireworks misfires to parade accidents, the Fourth of July turned deadly for many Americans who gathered to celebrate Independence Day this year.

A Fourth of July parade in Edmond, Okla., ended in tragedy when an 8-year-old boy either jumped or fell off a float his father was driving. A part of the float hit and killed the child, whose name has not been released.

Boy dies after being run over by parade float

Boy dies after being run over by parade float

7/5/13 1:08 Views: 77kMSN News/Newsy

“It’s just a freak, unfortunate accident,” a police officer told The Associated Press.

In Chesterfield, Va., Brendon Mackey, 7, was killed when he was shot in the head while walking down the street with his father before a fireworks display. Police said the bullet was probably a stray fired randomly into the air and not an intentional act, theRichmond Times-Dispatch reported. Authorities are searching for whoever fired the round.

In Bangor, Maine, a man driving a tractor in the local parade was killed when an antique fire truck hit him from behind, CBS News reported.

California fireworks accident leaves dozens injured

California fireworks accident leaves dozens injured

7/5/13 0:41 Views: 129kMSN News/Newsy

 

In Simi Valley, Calif., 39 people were injured when the wooden platform on which the fireworks display was set up flipped on its side, sending pyrotechnics into the crowd. Four people were seriously injured, and 16 more were hospitalized. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the accident.

Another fireworks accident in New Hampshire left nine people injured, including two severely injured toddlers who had to be airlifted to Boston hospitals, when fireworks exploded on a deck during a party, ABC News reported.

spark from fireworks set off a grass fire in Windsor, Colo., but it was swiftly handled by fire crews.

Illegal fireworks blamed for Seattle boat storage fire

Illegal fireworks blamed for Seattle boat storage fire

7/5/13 0:52 Views: 35kMSN News/Newsy

And in Seattle, illegal fireworks set off a fire at a boat-storage facility that caused $1.5 million in damage, kirotv.com reported.

In Georgia, a 14-year-old girl was killed and five other passengers were ejected, including infant twins, when the vehicle they were riding in hit a center guardrail and spun back into traffic, CBS News reported. The car had been en route to a family Fourth of July party.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Boys, 5 and 7, Shot Hours Apart On Violent Holiday

By Michelle RelerfordBJ Lutz and Lauren Jiggetts
Jaden Donald was shot in his stomach and leg just after 12:30 a.m. when someone opened fire on the crowd.

Two small children were shot and critically injured within hours of each while celebrating the Fourth of July holiday with their families in Chicago parks.

A 7-year-old boy was in critical condition Thursday evening after being shot at about 7:25 p.m. at Nat King Cole Park, in the 300 block of East 85th Street, in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood. Witnesses said he was picnicking with his family for the Independence Day holiday.

The boy was rushed to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

Hours later a 5-year-old boy was shot multiple times as he sat with his family at Cooper Park, 11712 S. Ada St., in the West Pullman neighborhood.

Jaden Donald was shot in his stomach and leg just after 12:30 a.m. when someone opened fire on the crowd.

“It makes me want to go in the house with my kids and never come back out,” Jaden’s mother, Jasmine Dillon Donald, said.

The family was on their way home when they stopped at the park to visit some friends who were there with their children, Dillon Donald said. There were more than 20 young kids with their moms at the park at the time of the shooting, she said.

Jaden was running toward her when he was struck.

Community activist Andrew Holmes said witnesses noticed a group circling the block several times before someone in the vehicle opened fire.

“It’s very disturbing that our children have to listen to firecrackers and fireworks and all of a sudden [have to] duck,” Holmes said.

Two men were also hurt in the shooting.

Throughout the city, at least seven people were killed and more than two dozen others wounded in shootings since the holiday began.

Cole Park has seen its share of violence. Two people were shot there within a month’s time in 2010, prompting officials to remove the basketball rims. Slain Chicago police officer Thomas Wortham, who lived nearby, was focused on restoring the park when he was shot and killed outside his parent’s home three years ago.

 

July 4 celebrations marred by fireworks disasters, fatal parade accidents

By Holly Yan, CNN
Watch this video

See fireworks blaze engulf boat

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Two women seriously injured in fireworks incident in Chicago, WGN reports
  • An 8-year-old Oklahoma boy and a man in Maine are killed while participating in parades
  • Fireworks shoot sideways in Simi Valley, California, a witness says
  • Illegal fireworks destroy 14 boats in Seattle and cause $1.5 million in damage

(CNN) — A spate of fireworks debacles and tragic parade accidents wrecked Independence Day celebrations across the country.

The mishaps Thursday left 20 people hospitalized in Southern California, two people dead in parades nationwide, two people seriously injured in Chicago and $1.5 million in damage in Seattle.

Two people killed in parades

In Oklahoma, an 8-year-old boy on a parade float was killed when his father accidentally ran over him, Edmond police said.

The boy was on a martial arts float that was driven by his father, police spokeswoman Jennifer Monroe said. It’s unclear whether the boy jumped or fell from the float before he was run over by the trailer’s tires.

See fireworks blaze engulf boat

Fireworks celebration ends in disaster

Another tragic parade accident took place in Bangor, Maine, when a man driving a tractor in the Independence Day parade died after a vintage fire truck struck him from behind, authorities said.

Bangor police Sgt. Paul Edwards said the parade had been rerouted because of a four-hour standoff with a gunman who fired several rounds at police from an apartment window.

The parade participants “would not have been on that street normally,” Edwards said.

Fireworks shows gone awry

A display in Simi Valley, California, turned disastrous when fireworks exploded low to the ground and injured at least 26 people.

Twenty-three of the 26 people who were treated at Simi Valley Hospital were released by Friday morning, said hospital CEO Kim Milstein. One person was transferred to a burn center and two people were admitted to the hospital and were in fair condition.

Among those who were treated and released was a 17-month-old child. Injuries involved burns and shrapnel wounds, she said.

Witness Annisa Wynn told CNN affiliate KTLA that fireworks suddenly began shooting sideways into the crowd instead of up into the air.

“The fireworks were so close, you could see them on the ground,” Wynn said. “It never happens this way. People were screaming.”

The show, carried out by a pyrotechnics company, was part of an annual series of fireworks displays that began in the city in 1970, police Chief Mitch McCann said. Investigators were collecting evidence Friday, and the main investigation probably will begin Monday, Ventura County Deputy Fire Chief Mike LaPlant said.

Another show in Windsor, Colorado, sparked flames that rose 10 feet high over parched land, witness Kami Gilmour said.

“The first embers dropped and looked like it might have started a small tree on fire,” Gilmour said. “Then we realized there were six or seven fires all along the field, and then a gust of wind came and blew the fire all over the place. … Our car was about 50 yards from it and covered in soot.”

There was no immediate word of injuries from the Colorado fire.

6 die in Fourth of July Pennsylvania house fire

Fireworks sever woman’s foot in Chicago

An apparent near-ground fireworks explosion severed a woman’s foot and also seriously injured her sister-in-law in Chicago’s West Lawn Park on Thursday night, CNN affiliate WGN reported.

The explosion severed the left foot of Kristina Perez, 32, and left fourth-degree burns on the left leg of Lorena Perez, 34, WGN said.

“One of the firecrackers, instead of going up, went to the ground and hit Kristina,” her father, Eleuterio Carmona, told WGN.

The women said they were watching a fireworks display at the park when the explosion happened. Both were in serious condition at a hospital Friday, WGN said.

The display was not an official, regulated show, the station reported.

Illegal fireworks destroy 14 boats

Seattle authorities said illegal fireworks sparked a massive fire that caused $1.5 million in damage.

A firework landed on a boat cover at a boat storage facility on the north end of Lake Union, Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore said. He said the dry storage facility stacks boats four stories high.

Within seven minutes, the fire had destroyed 14 boats.

Seattle also had three roof fires started by fireworks, according to Moore.

Billions of Lithium Hexagon Diamonds Sprayed July 4th AS PREDICTED by Enterthe5t4rz