Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by D.C. police, earlier versions of this story said the child shot near a playground Saturday was 10 years old. The child is 6 years old. The story has been corrected.

A 6-year-old boy was shot and wounded Saturday afternoon steps from a playground outside an apartment complex in Southeast Washington, according to police, and officers were searching for two men wearing black masks.

The child was one of several people shot on one of the District’s most violent days in weeks. Authorities said he was struck in the left leg and was reported to be conscious at an area hospital.

D.C. Police Capt. Kelvin Cusick said the circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear, but it appears that the child was not an intended target when at least one gunman opened fire shortly before 5 p.m. in the 2500 block of Pomeroy Road. Police had previously said the boy was 10 years old, but later clarified that he was 6.

The child was one of eight people shot Saturday in Northwest and Southeast Washington. Two of the victims — a 19-year-old woman in an apartment in Southeast and a 29-year-old man in Columbia Heights — died from their wounds. Their deaths ended a 14-day stretch without a homicide in the District.

Saturday afternoon’s shooting of the 6-year-old took place near a playground that community leaders described as broken and filthy, located on a cul-de-sac surrounded by three- and four-story apartment buildings in Wellington Park, adjacent to Barry Farm.

Cusick said the neighborhood is relatively safe, but others disagreed. Trayon White, who in June won the Democratic primary for the Ward 8 City Council seat, said the playground is dilapidated and riddled with animal feces.

“There’s a lot of neglect here,” he said, noting a shooting nearby earlier on Saturday and another within the past few weeks.

White said the community needs to step up, but “the police have to meet us halfway. MPD has to be present.”

Paul Trantham, a member of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Ward 8, stood at the crime-scene perimeter and called on Cusick to put more police in some of the city’s most desperate neighborhoods. He said police should be doing more to seize guns.

Later, in an interview, Trantham said that shootings such as the one involving the 6-year-old “aren’t happening in Northwest.” The police, he said, “need to put a force out greater than what they have here.”

The first of Saturday’s shootings occurred shortly after 2 a.m. in the 900 block of Emerson Street NW, near the Brightwood Park neighborhood.

Two people were shot and wounded in a car about 2:35 a.m. on the Anacostia Freeway near Suitland Parkway. No other details were available. Authorities shut down the southbound lanes of the freeway for several hours, diverting traffic onto local roads in Anacostia. About 2:40 a.m., police said, a person was shot in the 5300 block of Georgia Avenue NW, in 16th Street Heights, about four blocks from north of the shooting on Emerson Street. About 3:15 a.m., police reported a shooting in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE.

Six minutes later, police said, a person was fatally shot in the 3500 block of 14th Street NW in Columbia Heights. Police said Edward Roberts Jr., 29, of an unknown address, died at an area hospital. Trouble was reported in the area about 11 p.m. Friday when several gunshots were fired, police said. No one was struck in the 1300 block of Irving Street NW, about a half-mile south of the fatal shooting on 14th Street.

Police said that about 3:50 a.m., a woman was fatally shot inside an apartment in the 2300 block of Good Hope Road SE, at Marbury Plaza. The victim was identified Saturday as Anaiona Gaston, 19, of Hyattsville. Authorities said she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said they arrested a suspect in Gaston’s killing. Malik Fields, 21, of Southeast, was charged with second-degree murder while armed.

Before Saturday’s fatal shootings, the most recent homicide recorded in the District occurred July 15. Police said Sharod Harris, 20, of Southwest, died after being shot about 3:15 p.m. in the 4300 block of Fourth Street SE, near Washington Highlands. Two other people shot in that incident survived.

As of Friday, according to the latest statistics available, 70 people had been killed in the District, down 15 percent from the 82 homicides recorded at that time last year. The figures do not include the two victims from Saturday.

In all of 2015, police said, 162 people were killed, which was a 54 percent increase compared with the 105 slain in 2014.