BRUNSWICK, Ga. — A Georgia woman said Friday a teenager trying to rob her at gunpoint asked “Do you want me to kill your baby?” before he fatally shot her 13-month-old son in the head.
Sherry West wept while she told The Associated Press that she pleaded with the gunman and a younger accomplice who approached her Thursday morning while she walked near their home in coastal Brunswick.
“He asked me for money and I said I didn’t have it,” she said. “When you have a baby, you spend all your money on babies. They’re expensive. And he kept asking and I just said ‘I don’t have it.’ And he said, ‘Do you want me to kill your baby?’ And I said, ‘No, don’t kill my baby!’”
Police were combing school records and canvassing neighborhoods searching for the pair. While police have said the two boys were between the ages of 10 and 15, the mother says she believes the younger boy was as young as 5 years old.
She said the teen fired four shots, the first into the ground. West didn’t see a shell casing ejected, and said she assumed the gun wasn’t real.
Then he fired at her head and the bullet grazed her left ear — she has a small scab and bruising there. He fired again and shot her in the left leg above the knee. “I didn’t know I was hurt.”
“The boy proceeded to go around to the stroller and he shot my baby in the face,” she said. “And then he just shoved me when I started screaming and he ran down London Street with the little boy.”
Police spokesman Todd Rhodes gave few details about the investigation Friday, but said no weapon has been found and that investigators were checking school attendance records for leads.
Several people in the neighborhood called 911 after they heard the gunshots fired, but Rhodes said investigators believed that the mother was the only witness to what happened.
