A mother and daughter, injured by the same bullet during a Strawberry Mansion shooting, struggle to heal

Shaina Moore was pushing her daughter in a stroller as she walked her 8-year-old son home from school on a winter afternoon when shots rang out behind them and a bullet struck her leg.

“Run!” she yelled to her son, urging him to race ahead, away from the gunfire, as she struggled to steady the stroller and limped along the sidewalk, blood rushing down her leg.

Just feet away, on the corner of North 31st and Norris Streets in Strawberry Mansion, five teens were shot in a chaotic burst of gunfire that unfolded within seconds.

And as Moore would later learn, her 2-year-old daughter, Suhara, was also shot in the leg, struck by the same bullet that pierced her mother’s thigh.

On that February day, police said, three shooters were lying in wait inside a stolen silver Hyundai to ambush a group of teenagers. What happened next was captured on surveillance video from a nearby beer distributor: As the teens rounded the corner, the shooters jumped out of the car and sprayed at least 30 bullets in different directions.

In 13 seconds flat, seven people were shot as the teens ran and dove for cover before the gunmen piled back into the car and sped away.

In addition to Moore and Suhara, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the hand; a 16-year-old boy was shot in the arm and leg; another 16-year-old boy was struck in the arm; a 17-year-old boy suffered a graze wound to his thigh; and a 15-year-old boy was shot twice in the chest.

Police have made no arrests, and the motive for the crime remains unclear.

Moore, for one, is angry at the shooters who launched the broad daylight attack.

“My first question to them would be: Why? When you saw us, when y’all saw us ... why? Why did you continue to do what you were doing?” she said.

After spending days in the hospital, Moore, 31, now undergoes physical therapy several times a week to regain the strength in her leg. She has yet to return to her job as a support professional for people with intellectual disabilities. Suhara still has a bullet lodged in her leg, and the toddler cries and fusses when her mother changes the dressing on her wound.

In the rush of pain and confusion after Moore was shot, she said, she didn’t know her child had been hit. She didn’t find out until after she was rushed to the hospital, leaving her children in a friend’s care.

Moore says she hopes it haunts the three people who fired their guns that day to know that one of their bullets struck a child.

“I hope that it’s eating at them,” she said. “I hope that they’re losing sleep behind it. Because there’s no way you can walk around comfortable, happy, feeling OK with yourself knowing that in a crime that you committed, a baby was injured.”

Despite her injuries, Suhara is bubbly and happy, her mother said, even as she stays close to her mom and brother, Princekai’mir. Although he was not physically harmed, the boy is at once clingy and protective, Moore said.

She still remembers how he looked at her when she told him to run. It was clear he wanted to rush to her side, but he did as she said and raced off in the other direction, his school backpack strapped to his shoulders as he ran.

The Feb. 18 shooting was one of 422 in the city so far this year amid a gun violence crisis that has claimed the lives of 89 people and left 361 others injured. The gunfire has primarily affected communities of color and people living in poverty.

In Moore’s case, the shooting happened just blocks from her Strawberry Mansion home. These days, she said, she goes out of her way to avoid the street where her daily routine was shattered by what she at first thought was the sound of firecrackers.

Even at 2, she said, Suhara recalls the shooting whenever the family is near the block where it happened. “She can ride past and she’ll say what happened,” Moore said. “A 2-year-old should not have to say things like that. A 2-year-old shouldn’t be able to articulate that something like that happened and actually be able to remember that that’s what happened in that very spot. She shouldn’t understand that.”

Loud noises startle her daughter, Moore said. “She’ll say ‘What’s that?’ or she’ll say ‘You hear that, mom? You hear that?’” Moore said, on a recent afternoon as she sat with her children in the living room of her cozy, two-story home.

Still, she said, the children are resilient. On this day, Suhara, wearing a pink sweat suit emblazoned with the words “You are so amazing,” smiled at her mother and brother as she laughed and played with her toys, then sat in a pink fuzzy chair to draw.

“I’ve never witnessed somebody be that strong,” Moore said, tearfully, as she looked over at her daughter. “And to this day she’s still herself. Everyday I draw strength from her.”

As Moore spoke, Princekai’mir was playing a video game on a cellphone as he sat beside his mother on the couch. Every once in a while, without words and without looking up, he’d wrap his arm tightly around his mother’s, drawing her close and leaning his head against her shoulder.

Moore recalled how when she first came home from the hospital, her son almost never left her side, sleeping on the floor next to the couch where she rested when she couldn’t make it up the steps to her bedroom.

She said she’s inspired by her children, pushing forward for them, amid uncertainty and still-tender wounds. But the feeling of safety she once had in her home and in her neighborhood has disappeared.

As soon as she can, Moore said, she hopes she can move her family to another part of the city to escape all that reminds her of the shooting.

“I’m just ready to move,” she said. “I want to get from around here. Honestly, it’s a little uncomfortable being in the house knowing it happened around the corner.

“I’ve always felt like I wanted to be able to get away from here,” she said. “But now it’s like I feel like I need to, in order for me to feel comfortable or that I don’t have to worry about my child being worried about things.”