11 year old New York girl left paralyzed after struck by stray bullet

An 11 year old girl was shot in New York by a stray bullet and left paralyzed. The shooter was a 17 year old boy. From an article:

"A Brooklyn teen has been charged in the shooting of an 11-year-old girl that

from nydailynews.com

could have left her paralyzed.

Cops said Kane Cooper, 17, was apprehended after being observed on surveillance video following the Friday night shooting that struck Taylonni Mazyck.

Mazyck was hit in the neck as she ran to escape the hail of bullets. She fell to the ground after being struck.

It may be the last move she will ever make.

Taylonni was outside her Gates Ave. home in Bedford-Stuyvesant with her mother and 7-month-old niece about 8:30 p.m. when Cooper allegedly started shooting and hit her with a blast that may have left her paralyzed, police and shattered family members said.

Cooper has been charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and criminal use of a firearm.

“We heard shots,” said Taylonni’s mother, Priscilla Samuel, 46. “They came out of nowhere. We tried to run, but my daughter Tu-Tu fell down.”

Samuel ran over to grab Taylonni and saw the young girl was bleeding.

“She was calling out to me, ‘Mommy, Mommy,’” she said. “I saw the bullet in my baby’s face and I went crazy. Everything I learned as a nurse’s tech went out the window.”

Paramedics rushed Taylonni to Kings County Hospital, where doctors told Samuel her daughter may be paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet, doctors explained, is lodged in a vertebra of her neck.

Taylonni’s sister Latavia Fields, 26, said at the hospital that her family had just moved to Gates Ave., near Throop Ave. They thought the neighborhood was safe because an NYPD “Sky Watch” tower, which takes photos and video for blocks in every direction, stands across the street. An NYPD spokesman could not confirm Friday whether a Sky Watch tower is located near the shooting scene.

“There were cops on the block all day long,” Fields claimed. “What were they doing?”

“We were in the right place at the wrong time,” Fields said. “Why can’t we be out in front of our own home enjoying the breeze? There is no justice when this can happen to an 11-year-old girl.”"

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.