RadioOnFire.com - A 7-year-old girl was found shot Thursday afternoon in a car in west Baltimore, police said. She remains in critical condition in Shock Trauma.
Police responded to the area before 2:30 p.m. for reports of gunshots near Edmondson Avenue and Lyndhurst Street. Before police arrived, a bystander ran to an officer stationed one block away and said a little girl had been shot.
That officer, identified by Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle as Steven Reed, flagged down a private medic unit near the scene. Workers began to immediately administer aid.
"She's just a normal 7-year-old girl that likes to dance and loves music and now she's fighting for her life," Tuggle said Friday.
Police said Taylor Hayes was in the back seat of a car when she was shot in the back.
"She's 7. She has nothing to do with anything going on out here," said neighbor Savon Thomas.
An adult and another child in the vehicle were not injured, police said. However, the driver, 33-year-old Darnell Holmes, faces charges after police executing a search warrant on the vehicle allegedly found a .40 caliber handgun and suspected drugs. Tuggle said she is not being cooperative with investigators. Holmes is related to the other child in the car, but not to Taylor.
Police said they believed that the shooting was targeted, but not necessarily at anyone in the vehicle at the time. Tuggle said the car has tinted windows, and wouldn't say if the driver, Holmes, was targeted herself.
Family has been at Shock Trauma since the shooting, waiting on some good news. Around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, a family member told 11 News that Taylor "pulled through."
The 7-year-old's cousin, Ashley, said Taylor loved to sing and dance, and that her smile could light up a room.
"This is out of hand. It's out of hand," a neighbor said. "Me, as a parent, I don't want to walk around putting my life in danger of going to jail because I want to protect myself by carrying a weapon. So I go to work, I send them to school and come home."
Thomas wants his city and his community to come together.
"It can start anywhere, just bringing everybody together, trying to make everything better, but it's going to take a step at a time," Thomas said.
Officials are trying to determine if Taylor was hit by a stray bullet of if the vehicle she was in was targeted.
Police said they are investigating two crime scenes: Lyndhurst Street, where the car was shot at, and Edmondson and Loudon avenues, where the car stopped.
Police said they have gotten a number of tips, but are looking for more.
"The assumption based on the evidence is that more than one person fired a gun," Smith said.
Police ask anyone with information to call police at 410-396-2100 or text tips to 443-902-4824.
Source WBAL:
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