The youngest victim of Chicago's weekend violence, an 11-year-old girl shot in the chin and chest, appeared to be out of the woods after being in the Intensive Care Unit early Monday morning.
"She's doing very good now. She's up talking and everything. She says she's ready to come home," Tymisha Washington's father, Cory Lesser, told NBC Chicago.
But despite the girls' desires, Lesser said doctors told him his daughter will likely remain in the hospital for about a week.
Washington and four other children were walking by a park near Brownell Elementary School at about 7:30 p.m. when shots were fired from a car, Lesser and police said. One bullet hit Washington in the chin. Another hit her in the chest, puncturing her lung and shattering her collar bone, Lesser said.
Washington and a 15-year-old girl were transported to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County after the shooting. The 15-year-old was in stable condition by Monday morning.
"I was frightened. I was scared. I thought I was going to lose my baby girl," he said.
Washington's cousin, Jamanta White, took a bullet to the leg and was released from University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital after treatment. A 14-year-old girl wounded in the shooting was also at Comer.
White's grandmother, Rebecca Washington, spent the night traveling between the two hospitals. She said the incident ruined her Easter and said she wants to move to a safer neighborhood.
She described White as a great student who is on the honor roll at school.
A fifth child, a 14-year-old girl, walked into Saint Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center late Sunday with a graze wound in her buttocks, police said.
Pastor Corey Brooks, of New Beginnings Church of Chicago, said he's talked to the parents of a few of the victims and described them as "emotionally distraught." While the immediate family members of the children injured aren't members of his church, some extended family members are.
"If this is the beginning of [warmer weather], we are going to have a long way to go," Brooks said.
