Seven people — including two teenagers — were wounded early Sunday when a car driver sprayed bullets into a crowd attending a block party.

        Cincinnati police say it was the most people shot in a single attack in the city in at least 20 years.

        Idris Cockrell, 24, of Westwood, was shot in the head and was in critical condition Sunday at University Hospital. The others were wounded in their thighs and were released after treatment at hospitals.

        The shooting erupted near Kings Run Drive and Este Avenue about 1:20 a.m. after someone at the party of about 200 people threw fireworks inside the gunman's car, said police Sgt. Joe Priestle.

        No arrests or description of the shooter was released Sunday, but he was believed to be driving a dark, mid- to full-size vehicle, Sgt. Priestle said.

        One Winton Terrace resident said she saw two other men on the ground also firing shots — one as he stood in front of a store across the street and another from a porch along Kings Run Drive near her home.

THE WOUNDED

• Idris Cockrell, 24, Westwood, gunshot wound to head.   • Akisha Brown, 23, Winton Terrace, gunshot wound to left thigh.   • Bobby Henderson, 28, Cumminsville, gunshot wound to left thigh.   • Christine Sorrells, 17, Clifton, gunshot wound to left thigh.   • Dante Shelton, 14, Springfield Township, gunshot wound to the inner right thigh.   • Kotarah Thompson, 22, Northside, gunshot to left thigh   • Demetrius Watley, 26, Winton Place, gunshot wound to left thigh.

        “I don't know if the police will ever get a full report of what happened because there was so much going on,” said Marian McBride, who arrived home with her two sons, ages 12 and 14, as the shooting began. “It was that crazy and people were running everywhere.”

        The city has experienced skyrocketing violence, especially shootings, since the April 2001 riots.

        So far this year, 38 people have been slain, homicide investigators said Sunday — more than half of last year's 61 homicides, a 14-year high.

        So many people injured in a single shooting has been extremely rare in Greater Cincinnati.

        The biggest recent case happened in January 1989 when two men died and four were injured in a shootout among rival motorcycle gangs at a Mount Carmel bar in Clermont County.

        On Sunday, one person wounded in the Winton Terrace shooting, Christine Sorrells, was recovering at her Clifton home.

        At the party, the 17-year-old recalled, one minute she was munching hot dogs, drinking soda and dancing. Thenext, everyone scattered after someone in the crowd hurled firecrackers into the car. More “firecrackers” — which turned out to be gunshots — followed, she said.

        “Someone said a man was shot in the head, then someone else said another man was shot,” Ms. Sorrells said. “I was running with my cousin. Then I saw blood streaming down my leg. I said, "I'm shot! I'm shot!' It went through my leg so fast, I didn't feel it at first.”

        The bullet struck Ms. Sorrells from behind, sliced through her leg, then ripped into the left thigh of her cousin, Akisha Brown, 23, of Winton Terrace.

        “God help him,” Ms. Sorrells said of the shooter. “He is going to get his sooner or later. We were having nice, clean fun before he had to go and mess it up.”

        For Winton Terrace residents like Ms. McBride, the shooting is the final straw.

        “My nerves are shot. I can't take no more of this. It is time to move,” she said.

        Frequent drug sales near her home — several blocks east of Spring Grove Cemetery — alarm her so much, she said, that she does not permit her sons to venture out in the neighborhood.

        “I try to explain to them these bullets have no name,” she said. “ My sons have heard me warn about this, that it's real and can happen but they've never seen it until now. I hate to seclude them but I have no choice. I fear for them.”

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