73-year-old Bronx woman speaks out after being hit by stray bullet while waiting for a ride to go vote
NEW YORK - A Bronx woman was waiting for a ride to go vote in Tuesday's primary when she was hit by a stray bullet in the Belmont section.
Police are now looking for two suspects.
CBS2's Natalie Duddridge spoke to the victim and bystanders who came to her aid.
"It was a hail of bullets ... I took my shirt off, wrapped it around her leg," a good Samaritan named Clyde said.
He said he heard shots just after 4 p.m. Tuesday and saw a 73-year-old woman, who was sitting in front of her building on Garden Street between 7th and 8th Streets, had been hit by a stray bullet.
Duddridge spoke to the woman by phone. She did not want to be identified.
"We were going to vote. All of a sudden, I heard a shot. Then I hollered, 'I'm shot.' ... I was bleeding so bad. I put pressure on it. People tried to help me. A guy tied up my leg," the victim said.
That guy was Clyde, who saw she was bleeding heavily from a large wound to her ankle.
"Once she felt my hands, the pressure on her leg, she felt it, she said it feels better, than I knew that she was going to be OK," the victim said.
Bullets also smashed through two second-story windows that happened to be children's bedrooms.
Duddridge spoke to the parents.
"My 13-year-old ... was standing by the window as it was happening. She threw herself to the floor and felt the glass," one parent said.
They shared pictures of the shattered windows from inside the home. The bullets also went through the walls and wound up on one of the daughters' beds.
"If my daughter was any closer to the window, she would not be here right now," the mother said.
Investigators say the 73-year-old was not the intended target. They are looking for two suspects who fled in a dark-colored Honda Accord with temporary New Jersey plates.
"It goes on every day out here. This is our neighborhood. That's our new normal. So it ain't nothing new," Clyde said.
"I can't go back there," the victim said.
The 73-year-old victim tells Duddridge for now she plans to live with relatives and never come back to the neighborhood.
The woman was treated at the hospital and has been released.