Three children have been shot in Durham during the last month and it's prompted the community to band together to protect the innocent.

"They just happen to be caught in the crossfire of individuals committing crime," said Deputy Chief B.J. Council of the Durham Police Department. "They're definitely not specific targets. That's the reason we're concerned."

The latest shooting happened Saturday night right before midnight on Atka Court. Police said a 16-year-old girl was standing in a parking lot with several people when a man approached the crowd and fired. The girl was shot in the back of the head. Crews took her to Duke where she was in stable condition earlier this week.

On June 14, shots from a gray vehicle struck parked vehicles and a stop sign on Hart Street and during it all a 7-year-old boy was shot in the rear.

And on May 23, a 1-year-old girl's foot was injured when a bullet hit her outside of an apartment on South Hoover Road.

It's prompted Project Safe Neighborhoods to plan several community responses where neighbors team with officers to knock on doors to get more information.

"We have leads and we are getting some information but what we want is some more information so we can make some arrests," Council said.

There is another response planned for Wednesday at 5 p.m. on Atka Court. But the community is doing more for the families than trying to solve the crimes.

"The first line of defense for them are the people they're closest too and the people they spend the majority of their time with," said Katie Smith, a Clinical Social Worker at The Center for Child and Family Health.

The center has provided counseling services for those families involved.

A lot of kids can turn these things inward and have some feelings that they're not expressing through their behavior," Smith said. "Something like this happens and it really shakes their foundation."

Counselors here have been reaching out to the community for about four years now.

"Many of the kids that we see would never see the front door of a mental health clinic without going out with officers to try and meeting them where they are right after events happen," George Ake, psychologist for the center. "Unfortunately, we have some kids in our community who [deal with] chronic incidents, where this isn't the only thing they've seen before."

CRIMESTOPPERS
Anyone with information about these crimes is asked to call District 1 investigators at 560-4281 or CrimeStoppers at 683-1200. CrimeStoppers pays cash rewards for information leading to arrests in felony cases and callers never have to identify themselves.