Tennis and baseball boys hit in drive-by paintball shooting

Jaxon Wolfley, Reporter

ON WEDNESDAY, November 6th, members of the tennis and baseball teams were shot at by a paintball gun.

This event was a hit and run. The suspect in the car has not been identified by the team or anyone else who saw him. Luckily only two were injured. 

“The pellets hit me in the side of my head and my elbow. It was pretty hard too, it gave me a headache.” Will West (10) said. Many students involved were unsure about what to do in this situation. This could have been an incident caused by hazing, or just someone playing a prank. The man in the car drove away and was said to appear too old to be a student at Granger High School.

In an online article on paintballic.com, it states, “a standard paintball gun can shoot between 240 to 280 FPS. This speed is between a range of 163 to 190 mph.” Therefore, one of Granger’s Lancers could have been seriously injured. Some students were lucky enough to run, or not get hit by these paintball pellets.

One tennis-playing Lancer who experienced the incident described his experience. “I ran along with student vice president Ian, but other people got hit because they just stood there,” Tyler Khopha (9) said. Students were not the only thing hit during this paintball shooting. Some of Granger High’s property was damaged in this incident. A poster on the tennis court was hit with a pink paintball. This caused the paint to drip down it, onto the tennis court as well as onto the net on the court. Additionally, pellets from the paintball gun were found on the ground.

Some players took it as a joke, even playful hazing. “The man in the red truck said, ‘my bad!’ as he drove by and shot us,” Oliver Yeh (10) said.

Many are questioning why an older man would yell that for a joke as well as hurt minors. Paintball can be a brutal sport, but this was not a game. There are many paintball related injuries. Nolo.com said in an online article, 

“types of paintball eye injuries include hyphemas and vitreous hemorrhage (bleeding in the eye), retinal detachments, cataracts, corneal abrasions, and commotio retina (bruising and swelling of the retina).” Some of Granger’s Lancers during this incident were not wearing eyewear to protect themselves. Yeh, for example, was hit in the glasses. His glasses protected him from an injury that could’ve seriously hurt him. 

“It was a red truck and the paintball shooting happened at around 5:15,” PJ Khonsanait (10) said This situation is a new one at Granger, and many do not know how to deal with the problem. The truck the man was in had no plates. All the office can lead with was that it was a red truck. Now, Granger police and administration is unsure what to do about the situation. They seem to want to just move on from the incident. This might just be what they need to do. No one was seriously injured, so the best they can do is to move on. Thankfully no one was seriously wounded.