When Metro bus driver Briona Akins rounded the corner of Warsaw Avenue on Aug. 18, she was met with screaming, crying and a large crowd. It was loud.
Akins saw a young man on the ground, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Even with all the people around, no one was giving him aid.
Armed with CPR and first-aid training, Akins sprung into action.
She secured her bus with one passenger inside who was just as distraught as her. She called 911, passed the phone to another bystander, rolled the child onto his back and began performing chest compressions on him. Another bystander took a T-shirt and began applying pressure to his wound.
"He was still taking breaths, trying to keep his eyes open," Akins said in an interview with reporters. "I knew his life
wasn't over."
Eventually, first responders arrived and took the boy to the hospital. His condition is unknown.
As Akins spoke to the press Aug. 20, the house near where the shooting happened, 3752 Warsaw Ave., was no longer a bustling scene. A window near the front of the home a had basketball-sized hole smashed in it. It sits next to the Warsaw Flats building in a block that is home to several small businesses and a McDonald's. It was quiet.
A tipped-over bicycle with training wheels sat on a pathway leading up the home shared with a neighboring house.
But the house has been an issue for years, according to Amber Kassem, president of the East Price Hill Improvement Association. She called it a "trap house" where "anything goes" and drugs are rampant, and she's been trying to get the city to address it.
Kassem, a long-time advocate for the community as an East Price Hill resident herself, said this one block on Warsaw Avenue has been a 20-year project for her that seems no closer to completion.
"It's been 20 years of playing whack-a-mole," she said. "What is the city doing to make sure people aren't squatting inside houses like these and making it so high-risk to be around?"
Last year, Cincinnati sued the owners of 3752 Warsaw Ave. over mismanagement of rental homes in the city. Cincinnati spokeswoman Mollie Lair said just last week officials contacted the company, Second Avenue, and pushed them to get the house vacated.
Lair said Second Avenue currently owns over 100 single-families homes in Cincinnati. Under a variety of business names, it started buying homes in the city in 2022, according to the lawsuit, and had bought 280 by the end of 2024.
Many were sold off, but the city filed a lawsuit saying multiple properties needed maintenance and are a public nuisance. The case is still ongoing.
Lair said in an email that the city recently received a complaint about the house being blighted and reached out to Second Avenue last Friday, about four days before the shooting.
"Second Avenue expressed their belief that the property was vacant and indicated they would vacate and secure the property," Lair wrote. "It does not appear as though Second Avenue made any attempt to secure the building."
Lair said the city is taking steps to hold Second Avenue accountable.
The Enquirer reached out to lawyers representing Second City, but did not receive a response at the time of this report.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Child shot near problematic East Price Hill home, community leader says
