How a mother and her twins survived the Kingsessing shooting

Octavia Brown cruised down 56th Street, the windows of her Jeep Cherokee slightly cracked.

Dusk was falling, and a light breeze whispered through her hair as she made her way to her stepmother’s Kingsessing home. Her 2-year-old twins were in the backseat and 10-year-old niece sat next to her up front.

Brown, 33, slowed as she approached Springfield Avenue, she said, because she heard faint screams.

That’s when she saw the man, dressed in all black, standing in the middle of the street. Only his eyes and mouth were visible, peering out the holes of a ski mask, and in his hands was a rifle.

He stepped toward her car, Brown said, then he raised the weapon and pulled the trigger — at least 14 times.

“He was so close I could’ve reached out my window to touch him,” Brown recalled in an interview.

Four .233-caliber rounds from an AR-15-style rifle exploded through the Jeep’s windshield before she even heard the shot. That’s what happens when a bullet is fired: It moves faster than the speed of sound.

In all, four shots tore through the front windshield, and 10 more ripped across the driver’s side of the car, including one that pierced the rear window, inches from where Brown’s twins sat strapped in their car seats.

Three shots struck By-Kir in the left leg. Bullet fragments and glass sliced his brother, Jy-Fir, and their mother.

» READ MORE: Remembering the lives lost in the Kingsessing mass shooting

Their young cousin in the passenger seat dropped to the floor of the car and wedged herself under the dashboard so tightly that her aunt later had to struggle to pull her out.

Brown floored the gas as the shooter kept firing, breaking her back window. She turned left on Chester Avenue and sped up another block until she saw a Philadelphia Police cruiser heading her way.

She jumped out and flagged down the officer. She didn’t know about the safety of her children. She only saw blood.

“I think my children have been shot,” Brown screamed. “Please help us. Please help my children.”

Officer Laquisha Robinson jumped out of her cruiser and ran to the mother as more gunshots rang out from around the corner. They decided it was easier for Robinson to drive the family to the hospital in the Jeep than to remove the children, whose injuries were not yet known, from their car seats.

“All I knew was they were in trouble. I needed to get them to safety, I needed to get them help,” Robinson recalled in an interview.

So Robinson jumped behind the wheel of the Jeep, and Brown crawled in the back with her babies, and they sped off.

Brown’s 10-year-old niece, still curled up on the car floor, repeatedly asked, “Are we away? Are you taking us away from the man?“

And the twins, Brown said, sat silently, staring ahead in a near daze, holding their sippy cups, covered in blood.

» READ MORE: Law enforcement watchdogs say there should have been ‘more follow-up’ after bungled 911 call prior to Kingsessing mass shooting

With the Jeep’s windshield shattered, and no siren or emergency lights, Robinson leaned out the window as she drove, waving and screaming to motorists and pedestrians that they needed the right of way. She got the family to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center safely within minutes.

“By the grace of God, we made it,” said Robinson, who is based in the 12th Police District and has been on the force about five years.

Once at the hospital, Brown stepped out of the car, and fainted at the sight of the bullet holes. When she came to, she was on a stretcher, surrounded by doctors cutting off her clothes and searching for potential bullet wounds.

Brown was not shot, but three shards of glass had pierced her left eye. She said that bullet fragments and glass sliced her arms and head, and a piece remains embedded in her cheek below her right eye.

By-Kir was treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for three gunshots to his left leg. The bullets went cleanly through his skin, Brown said, and fragments cut his right leg.

After examining Jy-Fir, who was cut by glass and metal fragments, doctors brought him to Brown for comfort. She cried as she held him close to her chest.

“My son was just staring at me. His face, he was so lost,” Brown said. “I remember he was sitting on me, and just kept touching my face.”

Robinson stayed at Brown’s side that night, relaying updates from doctors on her sons and keeping her calm.

“I am a mother myself, and knowing this young mom went through something that traumatic. ... The human part of me, the compassionate part of me, knew I needed to make sure that she’s OK, and so that she knows that in this moment, you have somebody by your side,” Robinson said.

But by 3 a.m., Brown decided that she had to get to By-Kir at Children’s Hospital, and walked out of Penn Presbyterian without being discharged. Doctors ultimately admitted Jy-Fir to CHOP to check his eyes and keep the twins together, and Brown never left their side until they were discharged three days later.

On the day the children left for home, Robinson returned, candy and balloons in hand.

» READ MORE: Gunman in Kingsessing mass shooting killed one of his victims nearly two days before the others, police say

The family is now back at their South Philadelphia home. But almost two weeks since the shooting, they’ve gotten little sleep.

Brown, who worked as a home health aide, is out of work for the foreseeable future. Her vehicle, which she relied on to get to work, was totaled. Because she had only liability insurance, she’ll get no money to replace it. Even before all of this, she lived paycheck to paycheck, she said. Her landlord has been understanding, but she doesn’t know how she’ll afford upcoming bills. The family has organized a GoFundMe campaign to help with expenses.

The twins’ double stroller and car seats are in the back of the Jeep, which remains impounded for evidence, so it will be a struggle to get around the city with both children.

Not that she hasn’t tried. She took By-Kir out of the house for the first time on Monday, but he was a wreck, she said. Any sudden sounds or movements, even just a car passing by, makes him jump and burst into tears, she said. A once cheerful, playful baby, he now cries when separated from his mother, she said, and he wets himself more often.

The twins, who had been working with a speech therapist on some developmental delays, are now speaking fewer words, and whining more, Brown said. Neither is sleeping.

Brown said the children don’t understand what happened to them, but they know they were hurt; they feel their mother’s pain and stress; and they know that something bad happened to them.

By-Kir’s leg is still painful, and changing his bandage throughout the day is upsetting for both him and his mother. Doctors told Brown he should be walking on the leg by now, but he refuses to extend or put pressure on it. On a recent day, he scooted and rolled across his blanket to his toys, while his brother ran through the house.

Brown worries that this may set him back for the long term, especially considering the delays he was already experiencing with learning and speaking. She’s seeking physical therapy for By-Kir, and emotional therapy for both children and her niece.

And all the while, Brown has taken little time for herself, an attempt to stay available for her children, she said, including her 13-year-old son, who is also emotionally distraught.

» READ MORE: The Kingsessing mass shooting suspect used ghost guns, police say. Philly is suing two manufacturers.

Brown said she thought that the shooting was preventable. She questioned why the country’s gun laws allowed the shooter — identified by police as Kimbrady Carriker, 40 — to buy parts to a gun online, and assemble it into what’s known as a ghost gun. She was angry, she said, that police had failed to respond when Carriker allegedly killed one of his victims 44 hours before returning to the block and shooting her and her children. And she was frustrated, she said, that Carriker’s roommates and family didn’t report his increasingly erratic, concerning behavior.

“That’s just upsetting,” she said.

But the family is holding on to the fact that physically, they are OK — something they called a miracle.

“I’m so grateful. Anytime I cry, anytime I want to get sad, I just say thank you Lord that they’re alive,” said Shirley Toler, Brown’s aunt.

And Officer Robinson feels more inspired to serve the city that raised her.

“That’s what we’re out here for,” she said. “This is what we took an oath to do, to help people, to help our communities.”

Toler visited Brown’s house earlier this week, and before she left, she gathered the family for a prayer.

“Thank you, God, for their lives,” she recalled saying.

But as Toler went to hold Brown’s hand, she said, By-Kir started to cry and batted her hand away.

“I’m not gonna hurt your Mama,” she assured him.

But after what he’d been through, they said, how could he know?