Shot girl not sour on Apple
‘I can’t imagine living’ elsewhere
A brave Bronx HS of Science student who was shot by a bullet that pierced her family’s front door last year is terrified that the attacker is still on the loose, but refuses to let the nightmare ruin her life.
“I think someone should have been arrested by now,” Tamima Samira, now 16, told The Post last week. “We don’t know who did it. We don’t know what their intentions were. And like, that’s scary. And that’s honestly terrifying.”
But, “Emotionally, I feel fantastic. Never been better,” she said. “I was raised in New York City. I don’t think I could ever imagine myself living anywhere else.
“But in terms of like, how am I feeling about the incident in general? I feel like, you know, that shouldn’t have happened.”
Samira was doing her homework in the dining room on 113th Road near 205th Street in St. Albans, Queens, at around 11 p.m. June 7, when a bullet whizzed through the front door and struck her in the right shin.
“We thought it was fireworks for like the first 10 seconds, and my dad went to open the door to see what was going on outside. And then when I couldn’t get up from my chair and felt the pain in my leg, then we realized someone had shot at our front door,” she recalled.
Footage from a neighbor’s home surveillance system shows three suspects pull out guns and open fire before fleeing toward Francis Lewis Boulevard, sources told The Post.
While the motive and the intended target remain a mystery, Samira’s family does not believe that the bullets were meant for them.
20 bullets
About 20 rounds struck the front of the house.
“It felt like I was being electrocuted,” Samira said last year.
But she had the presence of mind to tell her father, Mohammad Hossain, not to open the door.
“I’m absolutely certain that if my dad had opened the door at that moment, he would have been shot, too,” she said.
Her mother rushed to tie a tourniquet around the teen’s wound, and her father called 911. Samira underwent surgery to remove the bullet.
The Bronx Science junior has only praise for NYPD investigators, saying they are “genuine” when she calls them for updates on her case.
“The investigation is ongoing,” the NYPD told The Post.
Hossain said the family is baffled: “We have no enemies.”
Unfazed
As for life in the Big Apple, Samira underscored, “It’s different for everybody,” but added that “being from New York City” and “living in such a crime-heavy city” has left her somewhat unfazed.
“Gun violence isn’t the only crime that goes on in New York City, you know,” she said, adding, “People get pushed onto the train tracks, and I use the subway regularly for going to school, for going to tutoring and for traveling in general, and the subway safety is honestly awful.”
Still, she said she is more conscious about gun violence since the shooting.
“To live in a country where you have more shootings in a year than you have days is absolutely insane,” she said.
Samira, who enjoys forensic data analysis, philosophy, listening to the K-Pop girl group Dreamcatcher and playing the glockenspiel, refuses to let the shooting ruin her vibe.
“I’m very resilient, and that has been one of my defining traits since the moment I was born . . . and that has been instilled within me by the people who have cared for me all my life. And I think that’s really special,” said Samira, who is originally from Bangladesh and moved to Queens when she was a toddler.