David Stephens of Jacksonville, Fla., apparently found himself in a serious predicament earlier this week after the 24-year-old mother of his two children was shot in random gunfire: caring for his kids, according to News4Jax.
“I was stunned, liked to caught a heart attack, you know,” Stephens told the television news station on Monday about his reaction upon learning that the mother, Lanay Davis, was shot. “It’s shocking news to find out that your children’s mother got shot, then you gotta be stuck with your kids and hoping that she lives.”
Stephens has two children with Davis, who is in serious but stable condition at a Jacksonville hospital. She was shot about 10 p.m. last Sunday while walking to down a street in a rough part of the city, the report says.
“Whoever it was, they just came up and went to shooting,” Davis told the station in a telephone interview. “Everybody scattered.”
A friend of Davis’, 16-year-old Charles McBride, was also shot, along with 39-year-old Jermaine Jackson, who is not a Davis acquaintance.
“I thought I was gonna die,” Davis told the station. “I was really scared for my life.”
News4Jax crime-and-safety analyst Gil Smith said that it is difficult to solve crimes in the area where the shooting occurred, which is known as Grand Park. He said that people are afraid to speak to police out of fear of backlash from criminals. So far this year, there's been one murder, 18 burglaries and one robbery in the area, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office crime map, the report notes.
“It's deep,” Smith told the station. “It's a very deep fear, because they believe that they're going to be found out.”
Read more at News4Jax.