A $25,000 reward is being offered for information in a Birmingham shooting that injured a 5-year-old girl and her mother.

Crime Stoppers of Metro Alabama planned to formally announce the enhanced reward Saturday during the annual One Heart in the Park at City Walk Birmingham, an event that is part of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.

Police say that that more than 70 bullets were fired in the April 19 shooting that sent the girl and her mother to the hospital. Investigators said the dozens of rounds were fired from multiple shooters, and they recovered spent shell casings from both handguns and rifles.

The gunfire erupted about 8 p.m. that Wednesday in the 3000 block of 29th Avenue North in the city’s Collegeville housing community.

At the scene, officers found the woman and girl in a front yard suffering from gunshot wounds.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service personnel took the woman to UAB Hospital while the girl was taken to Children’s Hospital. Their injuries were not life-threatening.

Authorities said the woman and her daughter were standing outside their apartment when a group of people pulled up in a vehicle and opened fire.

Officer Truman Fitzgerald said he believed that apartment was specifically targeted, but several others were also struck.

“The degree of selfishness and heartlessness to fire that many rounds in a housing community where it is a known fact they are heavily populated with children, we are lucky we’re not burying another child,” he said.

The increased reward money comes from the Gun Violence Against Children fund that was created in 2021 when Mayor Randall Woodfin issued a call to action after six children under the age of 10 were shot in the first six months of the year. Those six kids included 2-year-old Major Turner who died Feb. 5, 2021, just hours after someone riddled his Kimbrough Homes apartment with gunfire, striking both Major and his pregnant mother.

In June of 2021, Woodfin announced the new initiative with faith-based leaders, Crime Stoppers, the Birmingham Housing Authority and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that they said they hoped would bring the clues needed to arrest the suspects in the many cases of child shootings that happened last year and have continued into this year.

Just one week after conception of the idea, $125,000 was raised to launch a special reward fund for child victims so that $25,000 is now being offered for in cases where children are injured or killed.

In 2022, police announced an arrest in Major’s death, and Crime Stoppers approved a $25,000 cash reward to the person or people who helped provide the information that led to the arrest.

Crime Stoppers Chairman Frank Barefield at the time said the reward was the largest approved for payout in the agency’s history.

“We feel that during National Crime Victim Rights Week is the right time to send the message that reckless gun violence against the children of our community will not be tolerated,” Barefield said of Saturday’s announcement of the latest reward offering. “Those responsible for the injury or death of a child will be held accountable for their actions. We hope the reward money increase will enable law enforcement to bring justice to this family.”

Tips to Crime Stoppers are completely anonymous. Callers are assigned a number, and their names are never known to law enforcement. Tips to Crime Stoppers can be made at 205-254-7777.