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11-year-old boy shot in head
Vagabond child is said near death
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This single family residence in the 1200 block of Glenn Drive in the Magna Terra Estates neighborhood north of Doctors Hospital was the scene of a Sunday morning shooting that sent an 11-year-old boy to U.C. Davis Medical Center and wounded his brother in the upper arm. - photo by GLENN KAHL

A double shooting in a Manteca neighborhood Sunday morning left an 11-year-old boy near death and his 17-year-old brother suffering from a shoulder wound.

Neighbors reported hearing multiple gun shots from the direction of the house. 

The incident occurred in a bedroom in the 1200 block of Glenn Drive – north of Doctors Hospital just off Cottage Avenue – shortly before 1 a.m., according to Sgt. Jodie Estarziau of the Manteca Police Department who noted that a 17-year-old juvenile suspect had been arrested at the scene. He was booked into Peterson Juvenile in Stockton on a charge of attempted murder.

Hunter Davis, 11, a one-time student at Shasta School was shot in the crown of his forehead above the left eye at point-blank range, according to a witness at the scene. His brother Raymond was treated at the scene for a flesh wound injury to his shoulder. The brother had been standing down the hall. A bullet reportedly went through his shoulder and into the wall. A second teen said he had been hit with shrapnel from the wall board, at first thinking it was bullet fragments. 

Hunter was in a coma at U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

A witness of the shooting said that Hunter fell to the floor near the doorway of the front bedroom after being shot and the second bullet went over his head and through the older brother’s shoulder and into the hallway wall. Police removed a 5-inch-square section of the wallboard that held the spent bullet. 

Hunter was transported by ambulance to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp and subsequently airlifted by helicopter to U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. 

Neighbors referred to the two boys and their 13-year-old brother as “vagabond children” who were seen over recent months wandering the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night. Their parents had reportedly moved to Modesto after losing their home in Manteca. 

One neighbor who had helped Hunter said he had been struck last year by a hit-and-run driver as he was crossing Northwoods Drive near Yosemite Avenue. She said he had spent three days in an intensive care unit of an area hospital. The woman had also bought the boys Christmas presents last year of shoes, socks, T-shirts and underwear that she recognized they needed. 

Hunter faithfully got on a red Central Valley Baptist Church every Sunday morning to attend Sunday School, two neighbors reported.

The older boys reportedly attended Manteca High School and Hunter went to Shasta Elementary, neighbors said. They would all worked their back up Highway 99 from Modesto where they had been living with parents and into their old neighborhood in Manteca looking for someone who would put them up for the night.

Two residents of the home near the entrance of Magna Terra Estates, where the shooting occurred, said there were six friends at the house “just hanging out” when the shooting erupted. Neighbors said the group had been in the house and in the back yard where they could be heard partying loudly until the time the shooting occurred.

U.C. Davis had no update on the boy’s condition as of 6 p.m. Monday.