It’s every parent worst nightmare. A 13-month-old baby was shot point blank in the head as he sat in his stroller in Georgia, CNN reports.
"A baby has been shot!" one woman said in a 911 call to authorities in Brunswick, Georgia.
"Listen to me, ma'am! Is the baby breathing?" the operator replied, according to the recording obtained by CNN.
The woman is heard bursting into a helpless cry. "I don't know," she said.
How such a barbarity have come to pass? Hardly explainable. All is known is that Sherry West and her baby boy, Antonio Santiago, were strolling across London and Ellis Streets, in a stately cluster of Victorian-style houses with wrap-around porches when they were confronted by two teenagers.
“He asked me for money and I said I didn’t have it,” West told police. To show that he meant business, the older one fired a first shot into the ground. When she didn’t see a shell casing, West said she figured the gun was a fake.
Then, all of a sudden, West said, the teenager fired a shot that grazed her left ear and another in the left leg just above the knee.
"It all happened so fast" West continued. "I did not realize I was hurt."
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"Listen!" the 911 operator said to the distraught woman in the other end. "We have people en route. Did you hear shots in the area?"
“Yes,” she said.
"Be calm," the operator continued. "How many shots did you hear?"
"I heard like three shots. And the baby has been shot in the head," the woman replied.
Soon enough the woman was overcome with shock and a passerby assisted her with the phone call.
"No, the baby is not breathing," the man who was walking his dog when the tragedy happened told the operator.
"The baby was shot in the head?" the operator continued.
"Yes, right between the eyes," the man said.
In connection with the case, two teenage boys in the coastal city of Brunswick were charged with murder.
The older suspect was identified by police as De'Marquise Elkins, a seventeen year old, and his younger companion was said to be a 14-year-old, and because of his age could not be identified.
Police Chief Tobe Green said that Elkins will be treated as an adult in criminal proceedings. Both have been charged with first-degree murder.