NEWS: 4 year old shot in botched robbery

The following is more of a reason I back STOP AND FRISK.  I don't have children but I can imagine being with a younger loved one and some thug walks up to me with the balls to rob me only because he is packing a piece.  In this sad story a man was with his four year old son when they approached by would be robbers.  the details are sketchy depending on the news source but a gun the alleged robbers was carrying went off either intentionally or unintentionally, hitting the four year old and leaving him in critical condition.  According to reports the father, now enraged, got a hold of the gun and chased the assailants shooting one in the back of the head.  As of this writing the father is not arrested but is in police custody answering questions and may face arrest.

courtesyNY Daily News

Bronx

Bronx boy battles for life after robbery, shooting outside homeless shelter 

Assailant also shot in the head

BY Larry Mcshane , Joe Kemp & Erik Badia
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, November 9 2011, 10:17 AM

Ron Koeberer/Getty Images/Aurora Creative

The mother of a 4-year-old boy stood screaming for his life after the helpless child took a bullet in the face during a botched Bronx robbery, witnesses said.

“Keep breathing, baby! Keep breathing!” cried the boy’s desperate mother after the Tuesday night gunfire on a dark Bronx street.

Two eyewitnesses said the woman was also screaming “Call 911!” in the minutes after the shooting that also left his 17-year-old assailant critically injured from a gunshot to the head.

The child and his father were confronted by two would-be robbers — one of them armed — at Grand Ave. and Evelyn Place in University Heights about 10:15 p.m., cops and neighbors said.

The toddler, who neighbors said lives in a domestic violence shelter on the corner, collapsed after he was shot in the face.

The teen bandit took a bullet to the head, then rolled beneath a parked car as his cohort fled. The wounded bandit was possibly shot in a struggle for the weapon with the child’s dad, sources told the Daily News.

Police hoped the security cameras on every corner of the intersection will provide an explanation of exactly what happened.

One witness said she heard two gunshots before looking out her apartment window at the carnage below.

The wounded child’s mother and sister were putting up groceries in the homeless shelter where they live when the shooting started, while the boy and his dad were standing outside.

Both the 4-year-old and the shooting suspect were listed Wednesday in critical condition at St. Barnabas Hospital. No arrests were immediately made.

The shooting took place just a block from the June 10 shooting of a 5-year-old boy.

The child was munching on Chicken McNuggets on Grand Ave. near W. 184th St. when a gunman fired into a crowd — hitting the child and two adults. All three of those victims survived.

jkemp@nydailynews.com