5-year-old Amy Hayes is recovering at Shock Trauma after being caught in the crossfire of yet another senseless shooting in West Baltimore.
Hayes, who doctors say will survive, is the younger sister to 7-year-old Taylor Hayes who was killed this summer, shot while sitting in the back seat of a car near Edmonson Village.
Unlike her sister this summer, little Amy Hayes is expected to be okay physically, but it is the trauma to her, her family, and this neighborhood that will linger.
Perched at her window in her Sandtown home, great-grandmother Vivian Nealy can't escape the view.
"She was coming back home from the store. She went to the store and she was coming, I said, 'C'mon Amy.' She said, 'I'm coming grandma,' she made it no further than right there. She fell right there? I thought she fell because of her shoe being untied, but it wasn't, the guy said she got hit," said Nealy.
She watched her great-grandbaby get scooped up and rushed to Shock Trauma, leaving just her blood and her baby doll in the street.
A day later now as police return to canvass this area, a sidewalk ramp is painted to mark the spot.
Recently spray painted on the corner of McKean an Mosher in West #Baltimore. It is here where her great grandmother says Amy Hayes fell as she was calling to her to come home from the corner store. Her ggma thought she tripped. The 5 y/o Was shot in the groin. @WMAR2News pic.twitter.com/USbNyQjsT5
— Brian Kuebler (@BrianKuebler_) November 20, 2018
Two bullets from two different suspects accidentally struck two girls who combined have lived just 12 years on this earth, and their great-grandmother still can't fathom the connection.
"I can't. I can't. I am doing the best I can. You can't go through this again?" said Nealy.
Amy should survive the physical wound, but the struggle is bigger in this part of Baltimore. Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle says some communities are actually becoming desensitized to this kind of violence. He hopes people can be re-engaged by the atrocity of a shooting like this.
"When people pull guns with reckless abandon to harm other people and they don't care who gets hurt, that's an issue," Tuggle said during a press conference on Tuesday.
Right now, police still have no tips and they admit no leads. They know nothing of this shooting other than Amy was not targeted, and this has nothing to do with her sister's killing in July.
They say Amy was just caught between a gunman in a car, and a gunman on foot.
A crime scene that by the most tragic of odds is now the view out their great grandmother's window.
"She's my baby, she's my doll baby. She is everything to me. I can't do without, I can't do without her," Nealy said.
Police planned a crime walk to respond to this senseless violence Tuesday night, starting at the corner where little Amy Hayes was shot.
READ MORE: Community walks to rally against violence
