8-year-old shot at Philadelphia school

PHILADELPHIA -- An 8-year-old boy was shot in the face on a school playground Wednesday and a crossing guard was wounded, caught apparently in the crossfire between two groups of men, police said.

Children were arriving for class and some were playing in the schoolyard when dozens of shots rang out about 8:30 a.m., police said. Youngsters ran screaming toward the building as teachers and parents frantically tried to pull them inside to safety.

Police searched for the gunmen and a gray Lincoln Continental.

The third-grader, Faheem Thomas-Childs, underwent brain surgery and was reported in extremely critical condition. The crossing guard, Debra Smith, 56, was treated for a wound to the right foot.

The victims were apparently caught in the crossfire as two men in a car and three men on the sidewalk shot at each other, police said.

The shooting occurred near the T.M. Peirce Elementary School in downtrodden North Philadelphia, a section of the city where drugs and crime are common.

"We have innocent children just on their way to school getting shot in the head," a shaken police commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said outside the hospital. "We want to get these people off the street."

The school was locked down, though parents were permitted to pick up their children.

"It makes me angry, sad, upset," said parent Mildred Smith as she arrived to pick up her child. "This is a terrible tragedy."

The school district offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The school made news in 1999, when the principal closed the library because its books were so old that some did not mention the 1969 moon landing or the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education segregation ruling.

Thousands of dollars in donations poured in from people across the country, including Grammy-nominated singer Jill Scott, who attended the school. The new library was reopened in 2001.