Anderson 'dart wars' precede shooting at home tied to Bengals' Joe Mixon: What we know Thursday

What happened outside an Anderson Township home connected to Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon remains a foggy picture.

The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office has released very few details about the incident on Ayers Road that involved a home associated with Bengals running back Joe Mixon. Dispatch records show the juvenile, whom school officials said is an Anderson High School student, was hit in the foot by a bullet or bullet fragment. He is now recovering at home.

No arrests have been reported and no names have been released.

Here's what we know, and don't know, on Thursday.

911 calls: Chaotic scene unfolded during shooting

Recordings of 911 calls and other communications reports obtained by The Enquirer paint a picture of chaos as the shooting happens.

According to a dispatch report, a juvenile was shot in the foot or struck in the foot with a bullet fragment in the 7900 block of Ayers Road. A neighbor called 911 at 8:25 p.m. to report the shooting.

In the recording, the caller said three or four cars were blocking off the road and one kid was running around holding a weapon, possibly a fake one.

"Then he was screaming something and he went back to his car and he pulled out another weapon. It looked like a Kel-Tec (gun) or something, and ran up the back driveway of this house that he's going up and down," he said in the call. "Then all of sudden you heard him running down there and you heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and then the three other cars sped off."

Just after 8:30 p.m., a Hamilton County dispatcher in an archived police radio recording said someone had called 911 from the area of Ayers Road and had seen several people running, one of whom pulled out a gun and ran behind a building. Several shots were heard, and all the vehicles at the scene sped off.

Anderson High School students playing 'dart wars' on Ayers Road

Less than three minutes after the dispatcher described the witness' description, a deputy came over the radio: "It's juveniles. They are doing dart wars. Slow everyone down."

Turpin High School principal David Spencer said in a Feb. 17 newsletter sent to parents that dart wars is not a school-sponsored activity, and it cannot be played on school grounds or disrupt education in any way. Anderson and Turpin high schools are both part of Forest Hills School District.

'Dart wars':Here’s what they are

He said the sheriff's office has been called at least once each year about dart wars for the past several years.

He encouraged parents to discuss safety with their children, noting many of the Nerf guns may resemble a real weapon to someone seeing from afar.

A Twitter account dedicated to the 2023 Anderson dart wars game tweeted about an hour after the shooting Monday that all dart wars play is to be stopped immediately and suspended indefinitely, "due to an unforeseen event that occurred tonight."

House tied to Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon 'part of a crime scene'

Court documents connect Mixon to a house at 7950 Ayers Road. A warrant shows he was wanted on an aggravated menacing charge, with that address listed. The charge was dropped.

A trust is listed as the owner of the house on the Hamilton County auditor's website.

The sheriff's office confirmed there is an association between Mixon and the property, but hasn't said what association.

What we don't know

We don't know:

• Names of anyone whom authorities believe to be involved in the incident.

• If Joe Mixon owns the house, lives in it, or was even there at the time.

• The identity of the student who was injured.

• If law enforcement plans to file charges.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Anderson Township shooting leaves high school student injured