Man takes son to ‘paintball drive-by shooting,’ 10-year-old boy shot & run over by car

Father and son time went wrong in a Florida town after a local man took his child to a “paintball drive-by shooting.” Shot by scared victims who believed the attack was real, the boy was run over by his dad’s car.

The unconventional approach to parenting nearly resulted in a tragedy in the Florida town of Opa-locka over the weekend. According to a police report made public on Tuesday, a local 26-year-old man identified as Michael Williams agreed to take his 10-year-old son to perform a drive-by attack – with a paint gun.

They then drove to a residential building, where a group of young people were gathered in the front yard, and the boy opened fire on the crowd. At least one resident, however, was packing some real heat and returned fire, believing “he and his family were under attack.” The man hit the boy, who then fell to the ground – and got run over by his dad’s car.

While local residents told the media the father and son – as well as some other unidentified kids – were inside the car during the shooting, the father himself disputed such claims.

“No, the car came out like pulling up as he was shooting. There was no car, like, my son was already on the ground,” he stated. “He was on the ground.”

The parent then picked up the wounded boy and drove him to his mother, who called 911. Miraculously, the boy survived the questionable ‘play session’ with his dad and was hospitalized. While no information on the boy’s condition has been officially released, local media reported he was expected to make a full recovery. Williams was briefly arrested on charges of child neglect with great bodily harm, as the police said he “acted recklessly by agreeing to conduct a drive-by paintball shooting.” 

While performing a paint-gun drive-by shooting is obviously not the safest family pastime, the Opa-locka incident is not an isolated case of such behavior. Late last year, Los Angeles authorities sounded the alarm over a surge in paintball shootings. The city’s police department said it was a “recipe for disaster,” warning that the shootings are not only felonies as is, but those performing them can get easily killed by owners of real guns, including police officers. 

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