A 12-year-old boy named Angel was panicky and terrified. He had just seen a younger boy get shot in the head and fall to the floor right in front of him.
Tabitha Christy, 40, who lives next door to the Aurora house where the 7-year-old boy was shot Thursday afternoon, said Angel ran to her house to get help.
The neighborhood was quiet Saturday as Christy recalled the horrific events. She ran into the house at 1025 Vaughn St. and found another boy near the living room sitting on the floor holding the small child in his arms and pleading with him to wake up.
“His eyes turned back in his head,” Christy said of the injured child. “He was hardly breathing. His breathing was very weak.”
The injured boy, who Christy said lives two blocks away, remained in serious but stable condition Saturday, according to Judy Lutkin, Aurora police spokeswoman. The child was upgraded from critical to stable condition Friday.
Christy said the neighbor who lives in the home where the shooting happened was on vacation in California and had her son house-sitting for her, and Angel is his son. A man who answered the door there Saturday morning said he wouldn’t comment on the shooting.
Christy said while she ran to the house, her father-in-law had called 911. Christy dashed back toward her home because a few of her five children tried to follow her.
She said her father-in-law went into the home where the shooting happened to make sure the gun was safely out of reach of the children. By then, the boys had carried the wounded child outside to the front yard.
Other children who had been in the house at the time of the apparently accidental shooting were walking back and forth in front of the home waiting for more help to arrive, Christy said.
six children — ages 7 to 12, including the victim — were inside the home at the . Police are still investigating the circumstances of the shooting, and a determination probably will be made this week whether criminal charges are warranted, Lutkin said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, denverpost.com/coldcases or twitter.com/kirkmitchell
