The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE and LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Reporters

THE mother of an eight-year-old girl shot in the leg in Flamingo Gardens on Monday night said she is afraid to return home, is struggling to sleep and can’t stop replaying the moment when a man in all-black sprayed bullets on her and her children, endangering their lives. 

Up to press time, Teresita Rolle’s daughter was stable in the hospital. The family was still in shock, trying to understand what happened and why.

“All I know is we were sitting on a porch, waiting for my son to reach home, a car pulled up, so I assumed it was him because I know he usually gets dropped off, but when I looked up again, the gunman just came out and started shooting fire,” she said, adding the man was wearing a face mask. “He said nothing. He just started shooting directly at us.”

She believes the shooting could only have resulted from a mistaken identity.

“When the shooting start, I just grabbed the two of them and got low,” she said. “After he emptied the clip, they then sped off and my daughter started screaming ‘my leg, my leg’.”

 Ms Rolle, 43, can’t recall how many shots were fired.

 “It was a lot,” she said. “I thought it was never gonna end.”

 When the shooting ended, she had to regain composure and help her daughter quickly.

 “I had to put my feelings aside,” she said. “I fumbled for someone to call for help.”

 She said she was too afraid to return home and planned to stay with relatives for a few days.

 She is trying to understand why someone would shoot at her and her children.

 “For me, it’s just work and the kids,” she said. “My son, he just works and hangs out with a few of the guys from the corner, but that’s basically it. It’s no problems, it’s none of that. And it was just me and the two kids on the porch. All of that has me wondering what happened, what went wrong, what did I do? It’s confusing.

 “Every time I close my eyes, it’s like the same scene repeating itself over and over again. It’s difficult to sleep.”

 Ms Rolle said her children would likely require a counselling session.

 Monday’s shooting comes almost a week after a four-year-old boy was among three people requiring hospitalisation after being injured in a shooting. The victims in that incident were gathered at the front of a residence on Rupert Dean Lane and Ferguson Street when occupants of a silver coloured Japanese vehicle opened fire in their direction. The boy was hit in his left leg.