MEMPHIS, TN (abc24.com) - A little girl was shot and wounded when bullets started flying New Year’s Eve; she was inside a Raleigh apartment when bullets came through the wall.
Gabriel Wright and her 5-year-old daughter Ray Janae had just moved back to Memphis from St. Louis. They went to the apartment of some good friends to ring in 2013. In fact, those friends had just moved into the apartment at the beginning of December.
Then bullets started flying.
“My friend came out with my five year old in her hands,” said Gabriel Wright, “and was like, she got hit.”
It was a mother’s worst nightmare—her child shot.
“She was crying,” said Myeshia Bedford, “and ran around the house trying to find her mom.”
Bedford is a friend of the family; it was her apartment where the shooting took place.
Just after 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, gunshots started popping.
“I heard pow, pow, pow,” said neighbor Laquita Walker, “then it hesitated for awhile, then shot again.”
The outside walls of the apartment in the Highland Chateau complex in Raleigh were riddled with bullet holes.
Inside it was worse—five year old Ray Janae Artry was wounded.
A look at the bedroom where she was shot told the story. It was easy to see where the bullet came through the wall, hit Ray Janae where she sat drawing, bounced off a carpet and went through a wall on the other side of the room, out into the stairwell.
The results were obvious. There were bullet holes throughout the interior, blood soaking the carpets and even more blood on the walls.
“When I saw the blood coming out of her leg, I just grabbed her,” Wright told abc24.com.
After recovering from the shock, Wright rushed Ray Janae to the hospital, where the news was good; the bullet that hit her right leg didn’t do serious damage.
“It just went through the back and out the front,” said Wright, “there’s no damage to the bone.”
“It could have been worse,” said Bedford, “but I really wish it never happened at all.”
So, moving forward will the apartment where the shooting happened still be home?
“Oh no,” said Bedford, “I don’t even want to move anywhere around here.”
As for Ray Janae’s emotional state, “She’s playing games and everything,” said Wright, “she’s back to normal. The only thing she kept saying was ‘I got shot,’ like that’s it.”
But of course, there’s much more to it than that.
“Be safe out there,” Bedford told abc24.com, “it’s really crazy out here, really.”
While she suffered no bone damage, Ray Janae has a torn tendon so she’s in a boot and will need lots of physical therapy.
Happily, the little girl was discharged from Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital on Tuesday night, January 1, 2013.
