‘SHE’S LUCKY SHE’S ALIVE’
JP family grapples with shooting of 8-year-old
The traumatized mother of an 8-year-old girl struck by one bullet and grazed by another hunched over and spread her arms to show how she tried to protect her children as they fled the gunfire in a Jamaica Plain housing project early yesterday morning.
Taking shelter in a friend’s apartment, the mother, tears steaming down her face, recalled, “My daughter said, ‘Mommy, they shot me,’ but I thought she was joking. I said, no, no, they don’t shoot you, they’re shooting outside. Then I see the shirt, like, bleeding. She showed me and I put my fingers in and it’s filled with blood. ... She never cried.”
The Herald is not identifying the second-grader or her family because they are victims of a violent crime. No arrests had been announced last night. The family said the girl remained hospitalized yesterday, recovering from a bullet to her upper right arm and a flesh wound to her abdomen.
Police Commissioner William B. Evans said the shooter fired off at least 15 rounds at the Mildred C. Hailey Apartments on Heath Street, but the target was unclear. Investigators were looking for a dark gray Infiniti seen leaving the area from which police suspect someone was firing indiscriminately.
In a statement issued from a mayors conference in Miami, Mayor Martin J. Walsh called the shooting “unacceptable” and asked the public to give police information.
“We all should be outraged,” Evans said. “We could be talking about a young 8-year-old child being buried. Issues like this really wake people up, but the whole community’s got to work with us. I know some people will look at us and say, ‘ Oh, you’ve got to do more.’ We all need to do more. We can’t have 8-year-old girls getting injured in our city by gunfire. Let’s all work together to make it a safe summer.”
Shot-spotter technology alerted them to the gunfire at 12:11 a.m., police said. The mother told police she did not see the shooter and officers were unsuccessful securing any other witnesses.
The mother of six said she was returning to her friend’s place to collect her kids’ book bags after they’d spent the evening playing at a nearby park. The first shot, she said, “sounded far away and I didn’t see anything. ... When my daughter went inside she was like fine, happy. I tell my friend, can you put the TV on, but they were still shooting outside and he locked the door. He’s like, ‘No problem, I’ll put on a movie.’ ”
“She’s lucky she’s still alive,” the girl’s father said. “She smiles a lot. She’s a happy kid. She’s strong. Now she don’t want to go out. She’s scared.
“It makes me mad,” he said. “Why shoot at a little kid? They don’t care no more. They don’t respect nobody.”