Doctors are calling him a “miracle baby.”
Just days after 3-month-old Jeremiah was shot in the chest, he appears to be on his way to recovery.
Heading into surgery Monday, Jeremiah’s doctors warned “he could die in a second.” A bullet had grazed his tiny arteries, three bones were fractured, and doctors worried about further blood loss.
Hours felt like days for his family, but Jeremiah eventually made it out of surgery. By Wednesday, doctors were hoping he was strong enough to come off of his ventilator.
Jeremiah is the unlikely survivor of a near-fatal shooting in Little Village on Saturday that put him and his father in the hospital. Though the infant has a long road ahead, that he is pulling through has amazed his mom and the doctors caring for him.
“Everybody’s very shocked that he’s doing good … because he’s so tiny,” Jeremiah’s mother told the Sun-Times. “They’re surprised that he even made it. This is the smallest patient the surgeon said he had ever worked on.”
Their ordeal started with a trip to Walgreens.
The family had a birthday party to attend Saturday evening, but Jeremiah’s father wanted to get out of the house early and enjoy the day.
“He’s always about his kids, so he wanted to get the day started,” said Jeremiah’s mother, who asked not to be referred to by name out of fear for her safety.
About 4:30 p.m., the family pulled into the Walgreens parking lot at 3045 W. 26th St.
While his father ran in to get formula and snacks, Jeremiah, his mother and his nearly 2-year-old brother waited outside in the family’s new Camaro.
The boys’ father returned to the car, and while they waited in the exit lane, two gunmen climbed out of a brown, older SUV that police later said had been following them.
Now, the SUV was stopped directly in front them.
“When I looked straight I see somebody hop out, and then there is a gun to me, and bullets start flying,” the mother told the Sun-Times. “I’m just screaming, ‘The babies, the babies,’ because I have both my babies in the back.”
The father, 21, tried to run away from the shooters and was struck multiple times in the shoulder and arm and was grazed in his neck.
As he staggered to Walgreens, Jeremiah’s mother realized her youngest baby was shot.
His father screamed for her to take the kids and get out of there.
She jumped behind the wheel of the bullet-riddled car and took off east on 26th Street. As she neared California Avenue, another car cut her off and she spun out.
Stranded on the side of the road, the boy’s mother began yelling for help.
“I didn’t want to touch him so I grabbed the whole car seat … I didn’t know where he was hit,” the mother told the Sun-Times. “I’m just screaming and people are looking at me, and I’m like, ‘Why are you guys just staring at me, can somebody take my baby to the hospital? I need to go.’”
“Thank God an ambulance happened to drive by,” she said.
A ‘miracle baby’
As Jeremiah was loaded into the ambulance, his mother waited with his brother. Her in-laws arrived quickly, and they rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital.
“I sent the baby alone because I wanted to get him there whether I was there or not,” she told the Sun-Times. “He’s so little it was a matter of time before he could pass away.”
The panic continued for the next few hours, as she waited in the hospital hallways.
“I was just going crazy,” she told the Sun-Times. “The police officer, she kept coming back and forth and was like; ‘I still hear him breathing and crying, he’s OK, they’re still working on him.”
Jeremiah’s father was also taken to the same hospital in serious condition, but has since been discharged.
“The whole hospital [says] ‘he’s our miracle baby,’” the mother told the Sun-Times.
Jeremiah was recovering well after surgery, according to his mother .
“He even felt very cold before his surgery,” his mother said. “Now he feels warmer.”
Though Jeremiah is only an infant, he is very active.
“Already he always tries to respond, and tries to talk and already laughing, already trying to roll over and hold his bottle,” his mother said.
Jeremiah and his brother, who will turn two in a couple weeks, are already “the best of friends.”
“He just stares at me, his brother and his dad, and he just smiles,” she added.
No longer safe at home
Baltazar Enriquez, president of Little Village Community Council, attends a news conference about the condition of Jeremiah, the three-month-old baby who was shot July 27 inside a Walgreens parking lot, according to a Chicago police report, at the Little Village Community Council’s office in Little Village, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Unfortunately, the fight is not over for ‘the miracle baby,’ and doctors may be seeing Jeremiah into his teenage years.
The family has launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for future surgeries, physical therapy and treatments. As of Wednesday afternoon, the page had raised just over $2,300 of their $10,000 goals.
They also hope to use some of the money to relocate, because they do not feel safe.
Activists with the Little Village Community Council have turned their office at 3610 W. 26th St., into a drop off center for those wishing to donate clothes, formula, baby toys and other non-monetary items.
Lead organizer Graciela Garcia said at a news conference Wednesday it breaks her heart to hear they might move, but added this family — like others in the community — has been impacted by “several tragedies.”
Baltazar Enriquez, also a member of the community group, said he hopes this tragedy prompts officials to send help.
“Violence has become normal in our community,” Enriquez said. “No one gives us any tools, any resources for us to combat the generational trauma.”
As of Wednesday, there have been no arrests.
Family and community members are asking for anyone with knowledge or video footage to reach out to police.
