The 14-year-old shot in the face in Dilworth Park lost an eye and barely survived, but is improving each day, his mother said

Keiara Dessus was only a few blocks from Dilworth Park on Friday, Dec. 13, rushing toward her teenage sons who said kids from school were trying to fight them, when her eldest son screamed words she will never forget.

“Mom! Mom! They shot Khalil! They shot Khalil in the face!” her 15-year-old son howled into the phone.

Dessus’ vision blurred. Her chest tightened. Then she focused on what she needed to do — get to her children — and sped through every red light to reach City Hall.

When she arrived, she said, people were fleeing in all directions, and police were frantically working to contain the crime scene inside Christmas Village. Then she saw her son — standing on the corner, covered in his little brother’s blood.

After one of the boys pulled a gun and shot Khalil, 14, in the left eye, his brother carried his body to a police cruiser. For the next 48 hours, as doctors worked to save Khalil, his brother was nearly mute, his mother said. He would not change out of his bloody clothes until Sunday, when he began to emerge from the fog of shock and trauma, and an uncle gently persuaded him to shower.

In the week since the shooting, Dessus and her family have been forced to come to terms with a life that may never be the same.

Khalil barely survived his injuries. Doctors had to remove his left eye, and he has endured multiple surgeries. Many of the bones in his face were shattered, and a bullet remains in his brain. It was just 1.5 millimeters from striking his spinal cord, his mother said — which likely would have killed him.

But thanks to what his mother described as the extraordinary work of doctors and the hand of God, Khalil is alive — and improving every day. He woke up on Tuesday for the first time and spoke, and on Wednesday, he stood up. He has a monthslong road to recovery, his mother said, but he is out of intensive care.

It is, she said, a Christmas miracle.

Dessus, 37, is counting her blessings, she said, but grieving what her sons endured. And she’s angry at what she said ignited the argument that led to the shooting: a spat after school.

That’s all it took, she said, for a conflict to begin and then violently escalate, and for three teens to be shot by someone police believe is also a child.

“These kids don’t know how to love and say sorry and apologize,” Dessus said. “They don’t know how to use their words and coping techniques.”

Dessus and her husband, Qu’ran, live in West Philadelphia and work for the school district — she as the dean of an elementary school, and her husband in maintenance.

Their eldest daughter is a senior in high school. Khalil is a freshman at Freire Charter High School, at 20th and Chestnut Streets, while his 15-year-old brother is a freshman at a nearby school. Dessus asked that her other children not be identified for safety reasons.

Dessus said she has always diligently monitored her kids’ whereabouts and the friends they hang out with. If they went to the park, she said, she’d often sit in the car, watching and waiting. Her home was always open to neighborhood kids, she said, so she could keep an eye on everyone.

Her sons are loving and respectful, she said, but like all teenage boys, they sometimes get into conflicts at school. That is what happened before the Dilworth Park shooting.

Earlier in the day last Friday, she said, Khalil had overheard someone in the bathroom talking about jumping his brother. He told a teacher, and around 2:30 p.m., Dessus was called to meet with Freire administrators, along with her sons and the other teen. (The teen has since been arrested and charged with aggravated assault for his alleged role in the shooting that followed.)

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When Dessus arrived at the school, she said, she recognized the teen. Two days earlier, she said, her sons were outside a Dunkin’ Donuts when the boy threw something near her 15-year-old.

“Watch where you’re throwing that,” her son told him, according to Dessus. The teen started yelling and cursing in response, she said. She believes that is what triggered the boy’s plan to jump him on Friday.

By the end of Friday’s meeting in the dean’s office, she said, the situation seemed resolved. Dessus spoke with the boy’s grandmother on the phone, and the kids all shook hands. Administrators told her they would follow up on Monday, she said. (A spokesperson for Freire Schools declined to comment.)

After the meeting, as Dessus and her sons headed to their car, she told them she was going to stop at Jefferson Hospital to visit her husband, who had been in a serious car accident and was in critical condition. She gave her kids money to grab pizza with friends and told them to take the El home. She would see them soon.

Moments later, as she was driving to the hospital, she said, her phone rang. It was Khalil’s brother. The boy from school and his friends were following them, he said.

Then, she said, she heard what sounded like a fight and someone getting punched. The call ended.

Dessus turned around and started speeding back toward her kids. She called back and told her sons to run to Christmas Village and she’d be right there. She hoped the crowd would discourage any further violence.

Minutes later, she said, the 15-year-old called back screaming that his brother had been shot.

Khalil was rushed into emergency surgery at Jefferson Hospital, leaving Dessus and her family to worry and wait for hours. Meanwhile, her husband was upstairs in a hospital bed of his own. When a nurse told him what happened to his son, she said, he ripped his IV from his arm and tried to run out.

Then, over the weekend, as Khalil lay unconscious in the ICU, some teens took to social media to mock and troll him, his mother said — an increasing problem among teens, and sometimes a driver of retaliatory violence.

“This has to stop. This is a cycle that has to stop. All of our children are hurting,” Dessus said in an interview at her home Thursday. “They don’t know how to channel their anger, and instead of going to apologize or mediate, they reach for guns.”

She said that the city needs more programming for children, and that the community needs to step up to decry shootings and violence.

“Guns are not a child’s toy,” she said. “Us as a community need to put a stop to this. You see it, speak up. You hear it, speak up.”

Three teens, ages 14 and 16, have been charged with aggravated assault in connection with the shooting, which left two other boys, 14, and 15, shot in the legs. Police said they are still looking for the shooter.

Dessus, though, said law enforcement has not kept her updated. As of Friday, detectives had not interviewed either of her sons about what happened, she said, and she learned about the arrests from family who read about it on social media.

“This is how the cycle of violence continues, and why people don’t trust the system and seek street justice,” she said. “I feel let down — by my son’s school, the police, and the city.”

Dessus has since pulled her 15-year-old son out of school, and he has been staying with family outside the city. Her daughter is too frightened to return to school, and their father, still bedridden and recovering from his own injuries, is distressed that he cannot be at his son’s side.

The mother, meanwhile, has barely eaten or slept, she said, and feels like she’s looking over her shoulder anytime she’s outside.

Dessus has rarely left her son’s hospital room and thanks God that he is still alive.

Earlier this week, she said, doctors told her an MRI showed blood pooling in the back of Khalil’s brain, and they needed to do a procedure to relieve it. But when surgeons went in, Dessus said, there was no blood. While the doctor attributed that to faulty imaging, Dessus believes it was divine intervention.

“That was my Lord working,” she said. “That was my God showing me, ‘I got your back. You put your faith in me and I’ll do the rest.’”

On Tuesday, she said, Khalil woke up for the first time and briefly spoke. He told his mom he loved her, then asked: “Will I still be able to see?”

When doctors explained that they had to remove his left eye, she said, he cried.

“What did I do?” he asked. “I was just trying to protect my brother.”

The road ahead will be long and painful — physically and emotionally. Dessus has already enrolled the boys in a violence therapy program, and hopes to move out of the city as soon as they’re able. She doesn’t know when she will be able to return to work, she said, and because her husband is out of work from his accident, a colleague created a GoFundMe to help them get by.

Still, as each day passes, Khalil Dessus’ condition improves. He’s even standing.

Inside his hospital room, a small Christmas tree adorned with red and white ornaments twinkles next to his bed, and a collection of signs, hand-drawn by his nurses, remind him that he is brave.

“Nobody can ever, ever, ever again take my faith away,” his mother said. “He shouldn’t be talking, he shouldn’t be walking. But by the grace of God, he is.”