Days after brain surgery following a gunshot wound to the head, a 4-year-old girl on Wednesday was alert, talking, and had regained some movement.
But Jacele Johnson still has bullet fragments in her brain that will never be removed, doctors said.
"I really feel like God showed us a miracle with my baby," the girl's mother, Trennetta Gresham said.
Gresham's little girl was hit by gunfire last Friday when she jumped into a car with her cousin during a family party near West 70th and South Justine streets. Tense days followed, and while Johnson still can't use her right hand and her long-term prognosis remained unclear Wednesday, her attending physician said the recovery has been "tremendous."
"She was able to walk half-way down a very long hallway yesterday," said Dr. Rita Rossi-Foulkes of the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital.
Gresham said she and her daughter were making plans to move to Minnesota to escape Chicago's violence when the shooting happened. A 17-year-old boy, who is Johnson's cousin, and a 15-year-old girl were also struck by the gunfire but not as severely wounded.
"I don't understand what is going on with our city," Gresham said. "I never imagined in my whole entire life it would be this bad."
Local
No one was in custody in connection with the shooting Wednesday. Community Activist Andrew Holmes said a reward fund had increased to $11,000 for whomever provides information leading to an arrest and conviction.
At least 56 people were shot, 12 fatally, in Chicago in a spate of violence over the long Memorial Day weekend.
