John Richardson won’t shake this night any time soon.
“What are we coming to? What is this world coming to? This child wasn’t even one year old,” he said.
Richardson was talking with a neighbor who had just lost a family member to a heart attack, when a screaming woman fell into his front yard just after 3 a.m.
“She had the baby in her arms and she fell. We just ran and got the baby and brought the baby in,” Richardson said.”I just could not believe that that baby was hit and I saw that big old hole in her back.”
He called 911 and tried to help the baby by holding towels to the gunshot wound.
Richardson says he did not hear the shots but Rev. T.J. Booker, who lives next door, did.
“The shots woke me up out of my sleep. Ten, 12 shots. Down the street here,” Booker said.
Homicide investigators say two men on foot and a speeding SUV are likely the sources of the gunfire, but they can’t say if the vehicle the baby was in was targeted or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It is hard to believe that because it is one of the most perfect little babies you would ever want to see,” Richardson said.
The question that neighbors are asking now is what a 1-year-old was doing out at three in the morning. The baby’s mother would only say they were visiting family in the area.
In all, Richardson says at least three adults were in the car with the baby.
“Not one of them was touched. Not a scar on them. I can’t see how they did that to the baby. Crazy, but life is like that, you know. Life is like that and that is how bad it is out here now,” he said.
Police said the shooting is still under investigation.
This story comes to us through KFDM's media partnership with KHOU-TV in Houston
