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For the second year in a row, Fayetteville Dogwood Festival organizers estimated record crowds attended the three-day outdoor celebration.

After the festival wound down Sunday, Carrie King, the executive director, estimated between 225,000 and 250,000 people visited Hay Street and Festival Park.

"Last year was 200,000 to 225,000," she said.

Heavy clouds that let loose a few sprinkles Saturday night threatened to pour just before the Classic Car Show started Sunday morning, King said. Car aficionados - like festival attendees - stuck it out.

"Those folks are very fickle because they have a lot of money invested in it, but they came out and supported it," King said. "It was a great car show."

This year, the festival expanded its footprint to include Hay Street, where a stage and several vendors set up.

Husband and wife team Wendy and Robert Wagner heavily praised volunteers and festival organizers. They helped the Wagners set up their name in a frame booth quickly, they said.

"This has got to be the most organized festival we have been to in five years," Robert Wagner said. "I can't wait to come back."

Jacqueline Choice, a Fayetteville State student, said she loved showing her school friends her hometown. Choice was shopping for jewelry in the Baraka booth.

"It's really a part of the Fayetteville culture," Choice said. "Everyone should do it. It's only once a year."

Norma Salisbury agreed. She kept her 2-year-old son Jacob Salisbury inside Saturday because she was afraid of the rain, she said.

On Sunday, the boy jumped in large puddles formed along the curb. In his hand, he held a purple wooden frog his mother bought from a vendor.

"It's good to have these kinds of festivals so everyone can get out of the house," Salisbury said. "Today is beautiful."

Saturday night's revelry ended on an sad note when an unnamed 16-year-old boy was grazed in the neck by a bullet across the street from the Cumberland County Courthouse.

The boy was taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center with injuries that were not life threatening, officers on the scene said late Saturday.

Fayetteville officers said Sunday that the boy was involved in an ongoing altercation. The shooting spilled over from an incident that happened Friday.

Police had no indication on Sunday that the shooting was gang related.

King, the lead festival organizer, pointed out that the shooting did not happen at the event. She said police officers do a fabulous job of handling the crowd.

"Any time you get a large group of people, you are going to have issues," she said.

Fayetteville police Sgt. Eric Dow said seven people were arrested, four were issued citations and banned from the festival, and police ran quick checks on five suspicious people.

"For an event of that size, that is pretty conservative," Dow said.

Police also confiscated a few pellet guns from people who were shooting them near the midway. A man who was arrested Saturday night was shocked with a Taser, Dow said.

"He was trying to get away from an officer," Dow said. "He had a bag of marijuana on him."

None of the occurrences were odd, Dow said. On Saturday nights, groups of young adults are drawn to the festival. Some of those people think they can cause trouble, then melt into the large crowds and slip off into the darkness, Dow said.

"Today, we don't expect that same type of crowd," he said.

Ashley Carluccio and brothers Jody and Ricky Chavis were unaware of the shooting before they went to Festival Park on Sunday. They said they felt safe in the daylight, but they were cautious about staying at the festival after dark.

"These areas around here are just too bad," Jody Chavis said. "They are trying to make it better, but it's still bad. When you have bad people living around here, it's going to be bad."

The biggest worry on the minds of Michael Marvin and his friend Charlee Jordan was the weather, until they learned about the shooting. Jordan and Marvin spent most of their day near the bounce houses where they watched their children play.

"It makes it terrible for the little ones, for the innocent ones that parents have to fear something like that happening before they come to something like this," Jordan said.

"Short of staying home all the time, I don't know how you would avoid it," Marvin said. "Even then, it might find you at home."