Mom refuses to abandon neighbourhood

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This article was published 04/06/2010 (5939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bullets pierced her front window and wounded her two young daughters but Miriam Hughes will not be cowed. On Thursday, the 46-year-old mother stood in front of her Victor Street rental home and said she’s not giving up on her inner-city neighbourhood, or the teenagers accused of harming her family.

Hughes, the mother of two girls, aged eight and 10, who were injured in a West End shooting last week, was at a pipe ceremony organized by a group of aboriginal grandmothers.

Hughes sang a hymn in front of her two-storey white house while about 100 people looked on, including religious leaders, community activists and police.

Her family has been "out and about" since the girls were discharged from the hospital and will continue to live in the same area, she said.

"I ask God to post angels around my home and all my neighbourhood," Hughes said. "I don’t fear gangs. They’re babies, they’re kids, they’re crying, ‘Look, I’m here, somebody recognize me, somebody love me.’ "

Last Wednesday evening, a shooter fired at Hughes’s home.

A bullet hit her 10-year-old daughter’s leg. Her eight-year-old was hit by flying debris.

Eight days later, Hughes said the girls have rebounded. They were "hardly touched" in the attack, she said.

Hughes spoke with others from the Grandmothers Protecting our Children Council who preached peace and forgiveness.

"God is bigger than the bogeyman. He’s bigger than Godzilla and the monsters on TV," she said. "I just feel I’m covered. I have God’s hands of protection upon me and my children."

Police said the girls were not the intended targets of the attack, and the home was the "backdrop" for the violence.

Police arrested a 19-year-old. He’s charged with attempted murder while using a firearm and two counts of discharging a firearm with intent to wound, maim, disfigure.

The same man was also charged in connection with a deadly shooting last Tuesday, after two suspects fired on 16-year-old Kyle Earl on Toronto Street.

The 19-year-old, a friend of Earl’s, allegedly ran after the suspects and fired at two cars on Agnes Street, one with three people inside. No one was hurt.

He faces three counts of attempted murder.

Hughes attributes her ongoing confidence in her family’s safety to her faith and community support. The family is not staying at the Victor Street address, but plans to move nearby.

The family knows a 14-year-old boy who was allegedly on Victor with the 19-year-old when the shooting happened. He isn’t accused of pulling the trigger but is also charged with two counts of aggravated assault.

Hughes’s 16-year-old daughter was a friend of the 14-year-old.

The daughter said she’d been threatened in the past and she was "mad" after the shooting hurt her sisters. "I never thought anything like this would happen to them."

 

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca