Eight-year-old Jamia Barnes was playing Sunday evening on a front lawn near a vigil for a teenage boy killed hours earlier when she saw a man in a car arguing with a woman outside.
“Somebody had the gun in their lap … and he got it out and started shooting,” recounted the soft-spoken third-grader, fiddling with the bandage on her right wrist and pulling at her hair.
She saw a flash and smoke in that instant.
“That’s when I felt my arm stinging,” she said Monday. “And I was hollering for my mommy. And that’s it. And I went to the hospital.”
Jamia’s family has been marked by violence almost her entire life growing up in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Seven years ago, her aunt, then 28, was shot dead in an apparent drive-by shooting in the 1600 block of North Mason Avenue. Then last summer, her 11- and 19-year-old brothers were shot not far away while working on a dirt bike on a sunny afternoon in the 1800 block of North Monitor Avenue.
On Sunday evening, Jamia was attending a vigil near the corner of North and Major avenues for Malik Causey, 14, a friend of her brother’s who was killed about 4 a.m. Sunday a couple of blocks away.
When Jamia screamed for her mother after being shot, she was scooped up and driven to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park by Ashake Banks, a family friend whose own 7-year-old daughter was shot to death a few blocks away four summers ago.
Banks had heard the gunfire as she pulled up to the 1600 block of North Major around 7:50 p.m.
“She was crying, asking for her mother,” said Banks, standing outside the hospital. “We’re telling her, ‘Just hold on. We got you, we got you.'”
Banks said she couldn’t stop thinking of her own daughter, Heaven Sutton, who was shot to death in the same neighborhood in the summer of 2012. Heaven had been selling candy with her mother near their home when someone shot her in the back.
“I just couldn’t see another baby losing their life,” she said. “And I’m so sick of it. I’m sick of the community not saying nothing, not standing up. I’m sick of the shooters. I’m sick of it.”
Banks said she attends vigils for gun victims to deal with her own grief. She buys balloons, makes posters and takes photos. She said she has been to hundreds of vigils since her daughter died.
“I’m just trying to give back,” Banks said. “That’s how I grieve. I go to help other mothers.”
Chicago police provided few details about Jamia’s shooting and reported that no one was in custody. While Jamia was being treated, a 40-year-old woman wounded in the same shooting showed up at the hospital with a gunshot to her left hand, police said.
Jamia marks the 29th child aged 13 or younger shot in Chicago so far this year. She was among 56 people shot in Chicago over the weekend as the city closes in on last year’s gun violence totals with more than four months still left.
So far this year, at least 2,702 people have been shot in Chicago, according to data kept by the Tribune. All of last year, there were 2,988 shooting victims.
As of 5 a.m. Monday, homicides totaled 441, a 49 percent increase from 296 a year earlier, according to official Police Department figures. Chicago recorded 473 homicides for all of 2015.
Banks said she moved to west suburban Bellwood after her daughter’s killing in order to protect her three sons.
Jamia’s mother, Jamie Ellis, also moved her family from the Austin neighborhood for similar reasons.
“Every time I’m in the area, it seems gunfire goes off,” she said.
But just this past weekend, two people were shot within hours down the street from her home in the Lawndale neighborhood.
Jamia giggled Monday afternoon on the steps of the home as a bee chased a family friend. Her toes were painted a bright pink, matching her sleeveless blouse, and she wore earrings with the peace sign.
Ellis said she felt sick after changing the gauze bandage covering her daughter’s gunshot wound. She shook her head as she and a friend thought of what could have happened if the bullet had struck Jamia somewhere else.
“I’m glad,” she said. “I’m grateful.”
Chicago Tribune’s Marwa Eltagouri contributed.
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