5-year-old girl shot in head while sleeping at Pleasant Grove home

Dallas News ^ | 5/23/2009 | JON NIELSEN

[Dallas59]

Five-year-old Kayla Mitchell and her two sisters have their own bedroom, but the girls have always felt safer sleeping with their mother.

But early this morning, as Kayla slept with her family, she was struck in the head by one of six bullets that pierced their Pleasant Grove home in an apparent drive-by shooting.

“I can’t think of a safer place to be for a 5-year-old than with her mother in bed,” said Lt. Andrew Harvey, a Dallas police spokesman.

Kayla was in serious condition after undergoing three hours of surgery at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. Her mother, Shanika Sherman, and sisters, ages 6 and 11, were unhurt when three of the bullets came through a front window of the home in the 10400 block of Blackjack Oaks Drive.

The shooting happened about 4:30 a.m., just as neighbor Garnet Mims rose from bed.

[Dallas59]

Tragic...

[RebelTXRose]

I used to live less than 5 miles north of there. It’s really changed for the worse in the last 20 years.

[Drew68]

Kayla may have been an unintended target because someone else had recently rented the house. Sherman told detectives that shortly after she moved in, several people came to the house looking for someone who no longer lived there.

I guess when moving into a new residence, it's wise to learn about the previous inhabitants and who they still owe drug money to.

[Dallas59]

I don’t sleep any where near the windows on holidays during the summer. You can hear gun shots going off from I75. Idiots firing their guns into the air.

[gop4lyf]

I live and teach in Mesquite, which as you can see on the map is right next to “the Grove”. We get a lot of kids from there that come to Mesquite schools and you can’t help but feel bad for them. Pleasant Grove is/was mostly very low income white families and is trending towards being very low income hispanic families now. Needless to say it isn’t a very “pleasant” place to live.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Rapcrappers and Hiphoppers!

[autumnraine]

Prayers for that little girl and her family. How terrible and it seems like they were good parents letting her sleep with them. My heart breaks!

[ataDude]

I was raised in Pleasant Grove in the ‘50s-60s. Nice blue-collar area back then.

Now? You need an AR with lots of ammo just to visit. Gangs of all flavors... including MS13... now inhabit the area.

[KYGrandma]

Is that near the Forest Lane Texas Instruments plant? I lived near there many years ago. It really looked run down the last time we were there.

[wayoverthehill]

No. But the Forest Lane area to the East around Abrams and Audelia is going downhill pretty fast too.

I wouldn’t live in Dallas on a bet.

[Red in Blue PA]

The USA may not be a 3rd world country yet, but it is most certainly headed in that direction.

[Mobilemitter]

You can bet the farm that the miscreants who fired the rounds were not licensed to carry a weapon and have already been in and out of several legal institutions.
I have always been amazed at how we can throw endless resources at screening at this port or that gate or doorway.... and yet every night gunfire and the smell of dope fills the air of some neighborhoods.
We can spend thousands of dollars and ‘whatever it takes’ to surround any religous or anti-government sounding commune, hype it up so it sounds like a fortified military compound full of crazed lunatics out to end the world as we know it. Never mind that they are out in the middle of some deserted section of the boonies and seldom talk to anyone besides their own mental cases.
Meanwhile, in neighborhoods all across America we hear nightly gunfire, sirens and mothers weeping....
Justice for all? That must be one of those limited time offers, prices may vary and are subject to change, offer not available in all areas, void where presidentially prohibited...

[RebelTXRose]

No, from TI: Central south to northwest highway to buckner blvd (by white rock lake). Buckner WAY south past Thornton frwy (I30). At least 10 miles from Forest lane TI.

[oblomov]

The leviathan state will only be possible if there is a lawless class that can serve as enforcers. It isn’t enough for Uncle Sugar to pass out goodies to everyone, there must be an element of anxiety and dread as well.

[El Gato]

A week ago, well plus a day, we had a bullet come through the narrow window beside our front door. Hit the wall in the entry, but near the living room, then bounced diagonally accross the living room, which was a change of direction, both in elevation and heading, and then hit the wall above the doorway between the living and dining rooms. Then dropped to the floor, but bounching at least once, under a toy baby carriage (belonging to my granddaughter). Fortunately it was about 2:30 am, and noone was in the living room, except maybe the dog. There were little pieces of glass all over the living room, including on my wife's computer chair, her cutting board, and the stacks of fabric under it. An hour earlier and I'd have been at my computer, but that is well under and in the opposite corner from the trajectory. Latter in the week I found what might be a bullet scar on the driveway, ending in a spot with a direct line to that window. If the bullet hit there first, it would explain why it was going up as it went through the window, which we could tell from both the holes in the double pane glass, and from that first hit on the wall.

I didn't get to measure the bullet, which was somewhat deformed, before the police came and took it, but it was metal jacketed, and a hollow point. The hollow was filled with what I took to be from the drywall, of the first or second hit. The first hit was a grazing one, the second pretty much perpendicular to the wall, and nose or tail first by the size of it. I'd estimate a 9mm or 10mm (.40"). I didn't see it, but my wife said the responding officer's eyes got rather big when I handed him the baggie with the bullet in it. We'd even found a little peeled off piece of lead.

Thank God that it didn't hit 10 feet or so to the left, as it would have gone through a bedroom window, and could have hit our great niece, 9 1/2, who was sleeping there. Her bed is about at the same height as that first wall strike, and then you'd have read about us on FR.

No one heard the shot itself, in our house anyway, and no one else reported it either. We only know what time it was because my wife heard "something", probably the bullet hitting the glass and/or the walls, and then the dog barking. But he only barked a couple of times, and so she looked at the clock and went back to sleep.

I slept through the whole thing, of course, to be awoken at 8 AM, after less sleep than I'd hoped to get, to my wife hollering "Gato, there's glass all over the living room". I found the holes in the glass and shade. It wasn't until after the police came and left that I found were the bullet had hit the walls, actually the great niece mentioned above found the second one, and not until Thursday or Friday did I find the scar on the driveway. (It had been rainy when the police were there, making it harder to see. They did look around for brass, but didn't find any. Bullet could have been from a .38 or .357 I suppose, but more likely was fired from quite some distance away.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Prayers for the little girl.

[Vinnie]

Thanks goodness the ACLU got the ‘stop and frisk’ and ‘loitering’ laws struck down, circa 70’s.
/s

Now the cops are powerless to search a bunch of gangbangers standing around doing nothing unlawful. Even though likely most of them are armed.