A 7-year-old boy went out for water ice and got shot. Now he is afraid to come home.

Lakeia Winston knew her 7-year-old son, Major, as a brave and spirited boy, always easy with a joke and happy to dance in public if given the opportunity. Now, she says, he is afraid to return home from the hospital after a bullet struck his upper left thigh Thursday evening as he played with friends on his East Germantown block.

”My son don’t want to come here. And he’s a fearless little boy,” she said. “But he don’t wanna come home.”

Major and his friends were just returning from a trip to a nearby store to buy water ice when gunfire broke out shortly before 6 p.m. on the 5900 block of North 21st Street. Bullets struck Major and two other victims — a 15-year-old boy who was shot twice in the head and twice in the back and a 16-year-old boy who was shot once in the right shoulder. Both teens are in stable condition, according to police. A 17-year-old boy, who was later identified as Nazeem Rains, was shot in the face and taken to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

On warmer days, the neighborhood children often walked down the street for water ice, Winston said. After Major and his friends returned as usual with snacks, she heard them talking and joking through the window she had left open.

Suddenly, she heard several loud popping noises and immediately feared the worst.

“It sounded like a bomb went off. And I ran to the door because my kids was out there,” Winston said Friday afternoon. “My daughter was just stuck like a deer in headlights. But Major was running up the steps and he was screaming, holding his leg. But I didn’t know that he got struck.”

Major crawled up the steps, telling his mother that it hurt and burned. As she tended to her son, a first grader at Prince Hill Elementary School, she saw at least one young boy on the street drop a gun and pick it back up to continue shooting, she said. The shooters had come from the direction of West Nedro Avenue.

No arrests had been made and no suspects have been identified. A motive was not released.

Rains is the 13th child under the age of 18 to die in a shooting in Philadelphia this year. In total, 68 kids have been shot.

In her home Friday, much of Winston’s and her children’s belongings were bagged up, ready for a move they had planned before the shooting. Her daughter, Mizani, 11, was upstairs, calling to her mother occasionally to check on her. Winston said she is angry that her children will now carry the trauma of surviving gun violence. She hopes the move will help.

“I don’t want to live here because this is not my life. I’m not going to be around here crying or pleading or begging for help,” she said.

Major, who was recovering at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on Friday, has a vibrant personality, his mother said. He often pledged to work hard to provide for his family when he grows up. He loved football and cracking jokes. In videos of the celebrations after the Philadelphia Eagles won this year’s NFC Championship, Major is seen hopping into a crowd of fans without hesitation, exploding into dance as they cheer him on.

Now, her son is angry, too, Winston said, seemingly at the pain he endures and the disruption to his day-to-day life. When a television was turned on and news coverage of the shooting popped on the screen, Major became upset and told them to turn it off, she recalled .

With doctors saying Major may be discharged in a day or two, Winston wasn’t too worried about his physical recovery. The hospital planned to send him home with equipment to get around while he recovers and complete physical therapy. She worried about how he’d feel coming back to the place where it happened.