An 8-year-old shot in the head on her way home from school shows what’s at stake in Kensington

Keilyn Natareno walked out of Lewis Elkin Elementary School and ran to her father’s side, weaving through the crowd of children and parents gathered for school dismissal.

Holding hands, they walked to their white truck, parked along Allegheny Avenue in Kensington on that warm Wednesday in May. Keilyn, 8, hopped into the front passenger seat and her father, Orlando, slid behind the wheel.

Keilyn was giggling and telling her dad what she learned in school as he began to drive forward. Then all of a sudden, there was a bang.

For a moment, Natareno thought a rock had hit their windshield. Then he saw a penny-sized hole in the glass and heard his daughter’s screams. Cherry-red blood was spilling down her face.

A bullet, fired wantonly into the street by a man wielding a 9mm handgun, had struck Keilyn in the head.

Time moved in slow motion after that, he said, frame by frame.

Natareno pulled out his phone and called 911. “Necesito una emergencia,” he screamed to the operator. “Mi niña tiene un impacto en la cabeza de una bala” — my daughter has been hit in the head by a bullet.

The father stepped into the street, waving desperately for the ambulance driver’s attention. But two other people — including a teacher — had been shot, and first responders were rushing toward them, instead.

Keilyn’s screams were growing louder, and he could no longer wait, he said. He called police again and told them he was driving his daughter to the hospital himself.

His hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles bulging and turning white. He sped through stoplights as an officer caught up with him and escorted him through traffic. St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children was only one mile away.

Keilyn’s cries were intensifying. Her blood was all over now — her hands, the car seat, her navy school uniform.

“Cálmate Keilyn,” he said, urging calm.

They were almost there.

Keilyn doesn’t remember being shot.

She recalls getting into the car with her dad after school, but then says she thought she had fallen asleep.

She remembers small moments: hearing a loud noise. Staring up at the car ceiling. Seeing her dad run a red light. She thought it was all a dream.

Then, she said, she woke up on a gurney inside St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, surrounded by nearly a dozen doctors and nurses. She was scared, she said, and didn’t understand why so many people were touching her. She started to cry. They cut her dress. She had a headache. And why was her face all wet?

It was blood.

“The boy doctor was checking my belly, my arm and my heart,” she said. “Then they gave me a shot in my arm and the other doctors were giving me more shots.”

Keilyn’s injuries were serious. The bullet that flew through the car window pierced the side of her head near her temple, narrowly but deeply grazing the side of her skull and leaving a bullet-shaped groove.

The bullet did not penetrate the skull, but the impact of the shot caused a subdural hematoma, or bleeding, in the right temporal lobe of Keilyn’s brain — the area responsible for a person’s memory, language, and emotions, said Tina Loven, director of pediatric neurosurgery at St. Christopher’s. Bits of shrapnel also exploded into Keilyn’s eyes, Loven said.

The bleeding in Keilyn’s brain was minimal enough that doctors did not have to perform surgery. They cleaned and stapled the wound, and admitted her to the hospital for four days, during which they monitored her brain injury to ensure that her memory was intact and that she did not have any seizures. (Epilepsy can be triggered by injuries to the temporal lobe, Loven said.)

The glass that exploded into her eyes was treated with eye drops, and she healed well, the doctor said.

“She’s incredibly lucky,” Loven said in an interview. “If the bullet was a centimeter to the left, it would have been a whole different story.”

Back inside the hospital, Keilyn was growing more distraught. When she was taken for an MRI, she said, she could not stop crying for her dad, worrying that something had happened to him, too, and that she would be left all alone.

Because for the last year and a half, it has just been the two of them.

“He’s my everything,” she said.

Eighteen months ago, Keilyn’s mother relinquished custody to Natareno, 36, who came to the United States from Guatemala 18 years ago. Keilyn hasn’t seen her mom since, she said, and doesn’t like to talk about it.

Natareno raises her largely on his own, balancing fatherhood with owning a construction business. His mother, 17-year-old daughter Jade, and members of their church often help with child care.

He and Keilyn live in the heart of Kensington, on a block at the center of one of the largest open-air drug markets in the nation. Hearing gunshots is not uncommon, and getting to and from school has always been a delicate path to navigate — the dealers on most corners, the widespread drug use, the heightened risk of violence.

“I never expected something like this to happen because this is supposedly the safest country in the world,” Natareno said in Spanish. “In many places it is very safe, but not where I live.”

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has vowed to shut down the neighborhood’s sprawling heroin market, and has spoken often about the level of trauma the children of Kensington are exposed to on a daily basis.

Keilyn’s injuries show what’s at stake.

The man responsible remains at large. The shooter was riding a motor scooter down Allegheny Avenue, weaving through traffic, when a person driving a car accidentally collided with him, police said. He was thrown from the scooter and appeared injured, but then stood up, walked into the street, and fired four times indiscriminately.

A 45-year-old man walking by was shot in the leg. A 47-year-old woman who teaches at nearby Conwell Middle School was struck twice in the face. Both survived.

And then there was Keilyn.

“To see this happen to his daughter in the middle of the day, picking her up from school, sitting in his car, thinking you’re in your safe space. And then a bullet comes to the windshield,” said Loven, the doctor. “This is their worst nightmare. And luckily it had a happy ending, but it’s not always that way here.”

Juveniles 17 and younger are increasingly making up a greater portion of Philadelphia’s shooting victims. In 2019, children made up only 8% of the people shot in the city. So far this year, that number is up to 13%, data show. Keilyn is the youngest shooting victim of 2024.

St. Christopher’s has seen the impact. Three years ago, the hospital treated 40 children for gunshot wounds. Last year, the number rose to 60.

Children are resilient, but experts say exposure to violence can seriously alter their physical and emotional well-being and development, and make them more likely to develop anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

Since the shooting, Keilyn has refused to sleep by herself, she said, afraid that someone will come in and hurt her while she sleeps. She dreams that police will arrest the shooter and take him to jail, where he would stay “for like 1,000 days,” she said. “More like one trillion days!”

The police were looking for the man who shot her, she said. Then she paused and gasped.

“What happens if I see him?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“It’s fine,” she said. “People are watching him.”

Who?

“God,” she said.

Faith has always played a central role in Keilyn and her father’s lives. Each morning, they wake up and pray together — for each other, their family, their community. It grounds them.

But Natareno has always been the most calming force in Keilyn’s life, and she is his.

“Mi princesa, mi muñeca,” he said — his little doll.

Each night in the hospital, he slept on the small couch next to her bed. He fixed the windshield and headrest of his truck within days because he did not want Keilyn to see the damage and be reminded of the shooting. He scheduled a trip for the two of them to visit family in Southern California for Father’s Day so they could get away from the stress of the city.

On a recent day, Keilyn gripped her dad’s hand as they returned to the hospital to get the sutures removed from her head. She sat on the exam table, her eyes filling with tears as Loven started examining her wound. Natareno came to her side. He wiped her tears and caressed her cheek as each staple was removed.

Within a few minutes, Loven was finished. She spoke about getting Keilyn into therapy, and told her it’s normal to have occasional nightmares.

Keilyn, though, said she doesn’t really dream. “Only about unicorns.”

The doctor told her that she should start washing the right side of her hair again.

“Use a gentle shampoo,” she said. “Like for babies.”

Keilyn squinted and pursed her lips in a wry smile. She’s no baby, she thought.

In times of stress, she now whispers to herself what is certain: “I am brave.”

Staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.