A boy is recovering after he was shot in the face with a paintball gun in Glace Bay, N.S. Thursday evening.
Caleb Mitchell, 9, said he was walking down the street with his stepbrother when a vehicle drove by and someone inside shot him with a paintball.
“I looked back and it got me right here,” he said, pointing to his lip.
His mother Terri said she was in the backyard when she heard him scream.
“It was really bad. His face was swelling very quickly,” she said. “We weren’t sure exactly what the damage was. All I could see was that his lip was very swollen and his nose was bleeding.”
The paintball burned a hole in Mitchell’s lip and loosened several of his teeth. He said he is having trouble eating because he can’t fully open his mouth.
“An innocent child, his mouth is a mess,” said Terri. “He’s got to see a dentist. It shouldn’t be.”
Mitchell’s stepbrother, Riley Burns, was hit in the arm but wasn’t seriously injured. He said he didn’t realize how badly Mitchell had been hurt until he looked at his face.
“I thought it was just a little scratch or something, but then I seen him…and his lip was huge,” said Burns.
Cape Breton Regional Police are investigating the incident. The Mitchells believe the culprits are in their late teens or early 20s.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Ryan MacDonald
