Posted on 11/11/2009 1:18:59 AM PST by BBell
Seven-year-old Paige DeJean called her daddy every Sunday to keep him updated about school, her friends and just how much she has missed him since he deployed to the Middle East in June with his Louisiana Army National Guard unit.
But on Sunday, instead of a bubbly conversation with his little girl, Staff Sgt. Henry DeJean received a call from her mother with the devastating news that Paige had been killed, shot by a stray bullet as she slept in her River Ridge apartment.
"He was thinking it was his daughter calling him. He had no idea somebody was calling him to tell him she got shot," said Mia DeJean-Yepez, Henry DeJean's sister.
Paige was shot in the neck Sunday just after 4 a.m. as she slept on an air mattress with a 10-year-old cousin in her living room at Mark Twain II apartments, 10950 Jefferson Highway. She was taken to Ochsner Medical Center in Old Jefferson, where she was pronounced dead.
Authorities still aren't sure exactly what happened, but several bullets ripped through two buildings in the apartment complex, according to Sheriff's Office spokesman Col. John Fortunato.
No one else was injured.
Deputies investigating complaints of gunfire in the area around the same time Paige was shot found several .9 mm shell casings in the 200-300 blocks of South Upland Avenue.
Paige's building sits on the western side of the complex near the intersection of Upland and Jefferson Highway.
By early Monday evening, investigators had no suspects in her murder
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Staff Sgt. Henry L. DeJean of the 204th Theater Airfield Operations Group bids farewell to his wife, Diana, in Hammond on June 5. Diana is holding daughter Brieana, 1, and has her arm on the shoulder of 7-year-old stepdaughter Paige, who was killed early Sunday by a stray bullet.
Oh dear. God bless this poor family.
Prayers for family. What a tragic event.
Just a guess, but could’ve been someone drunk and celebrating something by shooting off a gun.
I wish we could do better for our military.
Why can't the dependents live safely?
Well her father is only in the National Guard so she did not rate any dependent housing. That said the poor girl would have been better off in Hammond.
How devastating to put your child to bed in the safety of your home and have her life taken by a stray bullet from a gun fired in the neighborhood!
The irony is that she was killed in her New Orleans, LA, home by a bullet, and her soldier daddy is coming home from the war to attend her funeral.
Prayers for the family. God bless and be with all who are mourning the loss of this precious little one.
“I can not even imagine the loss this poor guy has had”
I can...my daughter is also 7...
Unimaginable. I am heartbroken for this family. There cannot be anything worse. My prayers for all of them.
What a tragedy. Houses and apartments are not built to withstand gunfire. It is strange that in Afghanistan the walls around houses are built so strong that bullets do not penetrate but we live in cardboard houses.
In Japan the paper houses seem strange to me. Our houses are just drywall and stryofoam. Not stone and brick or even mud and wattle.
The real emotional hit is that the father was more at risk at war but his child gets killed by a stray bullet in the safety of her home. It was like the disconnect that more soldiers got killed in the safety of their base at Texas and yet on foreign bases they do not.
This shooting did not occur in New Orleans.
My daughter is 14 and I can not imagine ever losing her. We are supposed to bury our parents, not our children.
This is horrible. I hope they send him home to be with his wife.
He was home on Monday. The Military can be compassionate.
Oh, and it is not his wife he needs to comfort. It’s the mother of his daughter who is at the loss.
“Why can’t the dependents live safely?”
River Ridge is really not considered a particularly dangerous part of New Orleans The apartment complex where the little girl and her mother lived doesn’t look too bad. In one of the online ads, among other amenities, it mentions gated access.
Here is the community profile of the area
Community Profile
Population 26,407
Growth Since 2000 -5%
Population Density 2,811
Demographics
Male 48%
Female 52%
Household Income
Median $55,624
Average $73,275
http://www.apartmentguide.com/apartments/Louisiana/River-Ridge/Mark-Twain-II/86973/
http://www.apartmentsbytonti.com/marktwainII/marktwainII.html
I confess I didn’t read the whole article, only the excerpt. I’m glad he’s home, whether he’s married to his daughter’s mother or not. Clearly he loved the child. I can’t imagine the grief of losing a child.
I can’t imagine it either.
River Ridge is not a part of New Orleans.
Unfortunately bullets don’t check in at the gate.
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