“Not only are they despicable scum, they are also cowards too”
Police appeal for information after a young girl was shot in Brentry
More details have emerged about the racist shooting of a nine-year-old girl in Bristol earlier this month, as police step up the hunt for two yobs who targeted the girl in the street in the north of the city. The police chief leading the investigation described it as a ‘cowardly, thuggish attack’, and said the police and the community ‘won’t tolerate hate in the city’.
Speaking near the scene in Brentry, DCI Keith Smith outlined the level of resources Avon and Somerset were putting into finding the two teenagers, who a local Conservative councillor described as ‘despicable scum’, as both community leaders and the police urged those who know who did it to tell police.
The attack happened on Chakeshill Drive in Brentry, on the very northern edge of Bristol. DCI Smith said the attack happened out of the blue at lunchtime on Tuesday, September 2, the penultimate day of the summer holidays for local schools.
“The little girl has been walking down the road,” explained DCI Smith. “Two males have approached her on electric scooters and then fired the weapon at her, and then as they are making off they’ve been racially abusive and used racially offensive language as they have left the scene,” he added.
“It’s just a cowardly, thuggish attack. Obviously we won’t tolerate hate crime, we won’t tolerate hate in the city, and we will investigate it and we will pursue those who commit such acts,” the Det Chief Inspector said.
The weapon is thought to have been some kind of airgun or pellet gun. “Physically the little girl is ok at the moment, there was no significant injury. I think the real impact is on her emotional and psychological well-being,” said DCI Smith.
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“I think it’s been a really traumatic event for the family and the little girl. The message I’d send is that as a community and as a city we just need to respect their privacy at the moment, give them time to recover and process what’s happened,” he added.
“Obviously we won’t tolerate hate crime, we won’t tolerate hate in the city, and we will investigate it and we will pursue those who commit such acts,” he said.
The attack happened around 1.30pm on September 2, but police didn’t make a public appeal until Wednesday this week, more than a fortnight later. News of the attack has gone national, putting additional strain on the family and the community.
DCI Keith Smith speaking in Brentry Bristol, Friday 19 September 2025 about the shooting of a nine year old girl on September 2nd this year. (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“We try to pursue all lines of inquiry first and quite often we don’t want that information out there whilst we pursue those lines of inquiry, and I think we got to the stage where we hadn’t been able to identify the perpetrators at that point, and we felt that a media appeal and reaching out to the community, reaching out to the public was a viable way of trying to get that information that we really wanted to try and identify those people responsible,” DCI Smith explained.
Now, the focus is on finding the culprits. “At the moment we’ve got a lot of police resources working on various lines of inquiry. You’ll see various officers doing house-to-house, doing CCTV inquiries, also going through any information or intelligence coming through systems from a variety of ways, whether that’s Crimestoppers or calls in. So that’s a lot of resources investigating it at the moment,” he said.
“Fortunately this is an isolated incident, as far as we’re aware, we’ve not had any other reports of anything like this occurring. I think we will see an increased police presence in the area, so engage with the officers when you see them and your PCSOs, especially if you have any information or intelligence, not just about this but anything that’s going on in the area that might anti-social behaviour or criminality – speak to your local officers,” he added.
That appeal was echoed by one of the local councillors in the area, Cllr Mark Weston (Con, Henbury and Brentry), who is also the leader of the Conservative group at City Hall.
“Thankfully this is a very rare event, we don’t have this very often. But it doesn’t make it any less horrific,” he said.
Cllr Mark Weston (Con, Henbury and Brentry) speaking in Brentry Bristol, Friday 19 September 2025 about the shooting of a nine year old girl on September 2nd this year(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“The community generally are shocked, outraged and disgusted. You’ve got two, and we think they are fairly local, individuals who have decided to carry out a racially motivated attack on a nine-year-old.
“So not only are they despicable scum, they are also cowards too, because they’ve picked on a young child in the school holidays, and that’s despicable. Someone will know who these two are. They’ve carried out this cowardly attack and they need to be brought to justice,” he added.
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