Exclusive: Dog walker repeatedly struck in airsoft gun shooting spree in Brooklyn
NEW YORK -- A dog walker says she's been targeted in an airsoft gun shooting spree in Brooklyn.
Eylin Morales loves walking her furry friends around Brooklyn, but there's one thing this dog walker wants to forget.
"It sounded kind of like a repeated clicking," she told CBS2's Tim McNicholas in an exclusive interview.
She says for a few days in early August, she kept getting hit in the face with non-lethal gel pellets.
"It hurts. It really just hurts is the best way I can put it. It was like little icicles hitting you, almost," she said.
It happened near South First and Berry in Williamsburg, less than two blocks from the spot where someone in an SUV fired some kind of pellet from an airsoft pistol at another woman's face on Sept. 4.
A mother told CBS2 off-camera someone from that same SUV targeted her and her teenage son in Williamsburg that same night.
Morales didn't see an SUV. She believes someone was shooting at her from a nearby rooftop.
"It felt like rocks. It wasn't until somebody else said like, 'I think it's Orbeez that are hitting us,'" Morales said.
Orbeez are tiny gel pellets that can inflict pain when shot from airsoft-style guns.
Earlier this year, police in Westwood, New Jersey, even posted a warning to Facebook about an Orbeez Challenge on TikTok encouraging kids to shoot the pellets at people. One victim was in Westwood.
"It's hurtful to hear that other people are getting hit with it and that we're all just kinda walking around trying to avoid that from happening," Morale said.
Some might view as a prank, but it can put even the perpetrator in real danger.
Back in July, NYPD sources told CBS2 an 18-year-old had been firing gel pellets in the Bronx just before a man took out a real gun and fatally shot him.
