Anguished mom of NYC girl, 7, struck by stray bullet begs Mayor Adams for action on youth violence: ‘We can’t do nothing’
A 7-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet in Harlem after eating pizza with family remains unable to speak, her anguished mother said Tuesday — as she begged the city to take action on youth violence.
Fatou Keita was still recuperating from surgery, her family keeping vigil at her hospital bed, following the shocking broad daylight – and potentially gang-linked – shooting Monday, her mother Fatoumata Keita, 51, told The Post.
“She is a brave girl,” Keita said in an exclusive interview, adding that her daughter was showing some signs of improvement, but was not well enough to speak yet. “She is bleeding. She’s moving. She wants to talk.”
“She opens her eyes now. We talk to her and she does this,” the girl’s father, Ahmed Keita, said, shaking his head up and down. “She hears, she understands what we say.”
The shell-shocked mother, meanwhile, broke down in tears as she said Mayor Eric Adams needed to address gun violence that both victimizes and is carried out by youths.
“We can’t do nothing,” she said. “My daughter is in the hospital, only seven years old. My heart is broken.”
Two teen boys — a 17-year-old and Daniel Idowu, 19 — were arrested after the shooting that unfolded around 2:50 p.m. at 146th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and later charged with attempted murder, cops said.
Idowu, who lives about a half-mile from the scene, also faces four weapons-related charges, according to police.
The shooting’s motive is suspected to be gang-related, possibly related to one of several beefs between rival crews in Upper Manhattan, according to law-enforcement sources.
The alleged gunmen fired off at least nine shots that missed their intended target: an 18-year-old man who’s a suspected member of the notorious Mac Baller gang, sources said.
The two accused shooters are both suspected gang associates, although investigators don’t yet know which crew to which they belong, according to sources.
Idowu is also a suspect in a Nov. 4 shooting, sources said.
As the gunshots ricocheted, young Fatou, her 14-year-old sister and father were walking down the street, her mother said.
The trio had just finished up eating pizza while on an errand to fix Fatou’s eyeglasses, the mom said.
“She said, ‘Daddy, let’s go. You’re gonna fix my glasses today. I don’t wanna go to school tomorrow, my glasses are not fixed yet,” her mom said.
The family heard the gunshots as they strode near a Starbucks, prompting their dad to rush them into a 99-cent store for cover, he told The Post.
Unbeknownst to the dad, a bullet had hit his daughter in the stomach.
“She said, ‘Daddy,’ and I lifted her shirt and I see the bleeding, and that’s the time I knew she got shot,” Ahmed Keita recalled outside Harlem Hospital.
“I just freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. I screamed, I screamed,” he said, recounting he learned later he rolled on the store’s floor in anguish.
“The father lifted her clothes. She has the shot here,” the mother said, pointing her abdomen. “She has the shot in the back,” explaining the bullet appeared to have passed through the girl.
NYPD officers arrived and, finding the bloodied Fatou, rushed her to a hospital in a police car rather than risk the live-or-death wait for an ambulance, her mother said.
Fatoumata Keita, too, dashed to the hospital after learning about the shooting. She said the sight of her daughter clinging to life shattered her.
“Oh my God. I was on the floor. I was crying,” she said.
“So much…. my daughter… the way I saw my daughter, I was just praying…..hope, she’ll make it.”
After a successful surgery, Fatou has since opened her eyes as her mother clasped her hands.
“I just hold her hands because that’s what they’re telling me — to hold her hand,” she said. “Maybe she’s gonna feel it… ‘It’s mommy, I’m holding your hand.’”
“She is gonna make it.”
Breaking down in tears, Fatoumata Keita said the mayor should “do everything to pass gun legislation.”
She worried about random gun violence taking the lives of her five children as they go to the park, to school.
“I’m going to tell the mayor to do everything to pass gun legislation,” she said, apologizing as she broke down in tears.
“I’m gonna tell the mayor to do something. We have children. Our children go to school, they go to the park. They go everywhere. They want to go to the park. They have to because [they are] children, the children like to play. We can’t keep them in the home,” the distraught woman.
“They need to do something. They need to help us,” Keita said of city officials.
Her fears aren’t unfounded.
New York City has seen 92 shooting victims under 18 so far this year, according to the NYPD.
Last year, there were 99 youth victims of gun violence, NYPD data shows.
The number of youth shootings this year puts it on pace to potentially match the 138 kids who were shot in 2022 – the highest level in the past decade, the data shows.
Cops so far this year have recorded 16 shootings in the NYPD’s 32nd Precinct, which covers the block where Fatou was shot, crime data shows. That’s down 30% from the same point last year.
Youths aren’t just victims — they’re also perpetrators.
Police identified 57 shooters under the age of 18 as of the end of September, sources said. The NYPD tallied 96 shooting suspects under the age of 18 in 2023.
Within hours of Fatou being struck by a stray bullet, police said a 16-year-old boy in the Bronx was fatally shot by a 16-year-old girl.
Shaken relatives and friends streamed into Fatou’s hospital all Tuesday.
The girl’s father remained at her bedside long into the day. He called her surviving a gunshot a “miracle,” emotionally recounting how she opened her eyes and responded to her loving parents with head movements.
“I say, ‘Daddy’s here, daddy loves you. You know daddy’s here, mommy’s here.’ She did like this,” Ahmed Keita said, again, shaking his head up and down.
“I prefer to get shot, not my baby. That’s why I blame myself. They can shoot me, but leave my baby. She is seven years old… but they shot her, they don’t shoot me.”
The child received an outpouring of support from NYPD officers from the 32nd Precinct that covers the corner where she was shot.
They delivered flowers and the precinct’s commanding officer Deputy Inspector Bryan Natale visited, shaking hands with her father.
“If you guys need anything from the department, call me anytime,” Natale told Ahmed.
In response to The Post’s questions about the family’s call for action against youth gun violence, Adams’ press secretary Kayla Mamelak Altus stressed double-digit drops in shootings during the past two years and seizures of 19,000 firearms.
“Mayor Adams — like most New Yorkers — was heartbroken to learn about a 7-year-old girl being shot on our streets, which is why he immediately rushed to the scene yesterday after learning about the incident,” she said in a statement. “No parent should ever have to live in fear of their child being struck by a stray bullet. While every act of violence is one too many, this administration is taking decisive action to combat gun violence.”
A NYPD spokesperson responded to a request for comment by highlighting the department’s use of precision policing to combat gun violence, but offered few specifics.
The two accused shooters were awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday night.
– Additional reporting by Desheania Andrews, Craig McCarthy and Amanda Woods
