The mother of a 3-month-old boy named Jeremiah hasn’t left his side since he was admitted to a Chicago hospital last week following a shooting in the heart of the city’s Little Village neighborhood.
A bullet pierced the baby’s chest, fracturing three bones and grazing his arteries, doctors told the family. He remained intubated Friday evening after an emergency and life-saving surgery, said Graciela Garcia, a close family friend speaking on behalf of the child’s parents.
“Jeremiah is lucky to be alive—they’re calling him a miracle,” the young mother of the boy told Tribune. But doctors say that baby Jeremiah has a long road ahead with several surgeries and physical therapy at least through his teenage years.
“Please, stop the gun violence in Chicago,” the mother said. “No children should be hurt. I pray for all the mothers going through this and for parents who have lost their children to gun violence.”
Jeremiah is one of the youngest victims of the gun violence fueled by gang feuds in the neighborhood this summer. His father is also recovering from at least four gunshot injuries.
Community advocates and other neighbors have stepped up to help the family with the medical costs and to get them out of the area to avoid more violence after the attack that they say was targeted at the baby’s father.
The family was in their new car, leaving the parking lot of the Little Village Discount Mall in the 3100 block of West 26th Street, around 4:30 p.m. on July 27, when two armed men opened fire on them after following the family, Chicago police said.
They’d gone out to buy baby formula for their youngest son at the plaza’s Walgreens, the family said.
The mother tried to shield her two children who were in the back seat —Jeremiah and her 2-year-old son, Christian—from the bullets as the father attempted to drive away from the shooters. But the father was eventually struck multiple times in the shoulder and arm.
When the mother realized that Jeremiah had been shot, she said she was desperate. Both father and son were rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital. Hours after the shooting, only the cries from her baby she would hear through the hospital halls gave her hope that he was going to make it.
Though the baby remains in serious condition, the mother has faith that he will soon breathe on his own again.
“We’re taking it day by day,” the mother said. She has only slept increments of 40 minutes every so often since the shooting, helping the baby’s dad to treat his wounds and anxious to see her baby boy awake again.
“He is a sweet baby boy; a happy boy that has brought much joy to his mother and his little brother,” said Garcia.
Searching for a safe home
Garcia said she’s known the family for at least a decade. She understands, she said, the roots of the issues that lead youth in the neighborhood to be involved and dragged into street violence and how that affects them in their adult lives. Those issues include a lack of access to education and mental health services.
But Garcia hopes for a different future for the boy’s young family. Both the mother and father are 22 years old.
“Our top priority is finding a safe home and neighborhood for our children so this never happens again. We shouldn’t have to worry about our safety in our daily lives,” Jeremiah’s mother told Tribune in a statement. The paper is withholding their names at their request for safety reasons. They believe the child’s father was the target of the gunmen.
“We don’t want to go back to our neighborhood where this tragedy happened and unfortunately neither one of us (his parents) are going to be able to work anytime soon,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page that she created to raise funds to cover medical and relocation expenses.
The couple met in their teens and quickly fell in love, Garcia said. They both grew up in Little Village and most recently, the young father worked a factory job while the mother cared for their young children. The couple had recently moved to a small apartment in the neighborhood, eager to start their family.
Jeremiah is described as a sweet and strong boy. “His smile keeps his mother strong,” said Garcia. Christian, his older sibling, is facing some emotional trauma, she said. “She’s trying to stay strong for all of them.”
“Despite her young age, she’s a fighter. She’s going to fight for her family,” Garcia said about Jeremiah’s mother.
The Little Village Community Council, an organization that provides social services, is collecting clothes, formula, and toys for the family, while the non-profit Enlace is working with the family through victim advocate services and case management services.
Garcia said the mother is hopeful that “there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.” “Right now we are grateful that baby Jeremiah survived, but it could have been a different story,” Garcia said.
His story, she said, should “concern city leaders and those involved in street violence alike because it shows the desperate need to address these issues in our community to prevent this from happening again.”
Garcia, who lost a son to gang violence said that her work in the community has been focused on helping families recognize the generational trauma that leads youth into a troubled life.
For now, the family does not know when Jeremiah will awaken, but family and community members gathered to pray for his health, for the healing of the family, and that of the neighborhood to cease violence.
Dolores Castañeda, of Padres Angeles or Parent’s Angels, a grassroots organization that offers resources and mental health to parents who’ve lost children to gang violence, joined friends of the family in a prayer for the child. Alongside Doris Hernandez, she has attended at least 20 funerals of victims of gun violence in Little Village this year, she said.
“At this point, we are only helping people how to cope with this level of violence, there are no other ways to approach this,” Castaneda said.
Larodriguez@chicagotribune.com
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