A grandmother of a 3-year-old boy shot by a stranger and currently on life support is asking for the perpetrator to surrender to authorities.
Brayden Smith was hit in the head by a stray bullet on New Year’s Eve. He was in his northeast Memphis apartment, according to his grandma Taysha Davis, when shots rang out.
Now, the young boy is fighting for his life.
“It’s not looking good,” Davis said in an interview with WREG.
Brayden was with his family in their home in the Edgewater Apartments just before 6 p.m. when gunfire erupted outside. Authorities are uncertain about the origin of the gunfire; nonetheless, they speculate that the shots were fired because of New Year’s Eve celebrations.
“We thought it was fireworks, and we realized it was gunfire. We turned around and looked back, and Brayden was on the floor,” said Davis.
The toddler was not the only child in the apartment when the shooting started. He was accompanied by his 6-year-old brother when a bullet penetrated the front window, according to the grandmother.
Now the child is currently recovering at the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis with his family by his side. Davis is asking for the shooter to step forward and take responsibility.
“Brayden was 3. He’s a baby. I don’t have my grandson, my daughter doesn’t have her son. He’s on life support. Turn yourself in,” said Davis.
The hospital treated more than 170 children for gunshot wounds in 2023, WREG reports.
Two weeks before Brayden’s shooting, a 15-year-old was shot in the apartment complex near the corner of Danny Thomas Boulevard and Georgia Avenue in the New Pathways neighborhood.
Fox 13 Memphis reports that, like in Brayden’s case, police said the shooter was nowhere to be found at the scene. The teenage victim survived his wounds.
While Tennessee has very relaxed gun laws, allowing most citizens to carry openly without a permit, Assistant Police Chief Don Crowe says celebratory gunfire is illegal.
“Do not shoot guns for celebration,” said Crowe, who came to the apartment after Brayden was shot, seeing first-hand the devastation caused by the shooter.
He added, “The bullets will come down somewhere, and if those bullets come down and hit a person, it will injure a person. It is a crime to shoot a gun in celebratory gunfire.”
