NC child firearm deaths, injuries jumped in 2020. What experts say would save lives
Regina Maldonado and her husband were watching television when they heard the steady round of gunshots.
Gunshots were not unusual near their Pembroke neighborhood, but automatic rifle fire lasting minutes was something different.
“It sounded like hell had broken loose,” she said.
The couple ran to the door, and their phone soon rang.
“All I could hear was my daughter and my granddaughter screaming,” Maldonado said.
They had both been shot just outside the subdivision that she and her daughter’s family live in.
Scenes like that September night in Robeson County are playing out across North Carolina.
Preliminary numbers presented to the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force, a legislative study commission, show children 17 and under being harmed or killed by gunfire at alarming rates:
▪ Child firearm deaths rose 88% from 56 to 105 last year, the most since at least 1999, according to the N.C. State Center for Health Statistics. The previous high was 61 deaths in 2018. Most of those who died were boys 15 to 17 years old.
▪ Of those 105 children killed 66 died from assaults, up from 36 in 2019, according to the numbers. Self-inflicted firearm death doubled to 31, according to other data collected by North Carolina health officials.
▪ Overall emergency room visits for injuries fell 31%. Still, children injured by gunfire increased 15% to 319.
Becky Ceartas, executive director of the nonprofit North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, called the statistics “alarming and devastating.”
“When we think about just one person dying, one child dying in our community, it impacts their family, the community and the rest of the people that know them — and other people that can envision that happening to their child,” she said.
24 bullet fragments in brain
The shooting of Maldonado’s 9-year-old granddaughter, Estrella Sosa, happened too recently to make the task force’s report.
Estrella, which means star in Spanish, her 12-year-old sister and parents were riding in their silver Cadillac around 10 p.m. Sept. 11, almost home after a trip to Lumberton, with visits to Lowe’s and Walmart.
As the girls’ father, Ricardo Sosa, drove through a wooded area just before his turn home off Moss Neck Road, bullets were unleashed on the Cadillac.
Maldonado said her daughter, Retona Sosa, and granddaughter were not up for an interview with The News & Observer.
Sosa told ABC11, The N&O’s media partner, days after the shooting she didn’t know what to do when the gunshots started. Estrella and her sister were in the backseat. Estrella’s older sister jumped on her to protect her.
Still, Estrella was shot in the back three times. Another bullet hit her in the head, shattering into two dozen fragments inside her brain, her grandmother said. When Estrella tried to move, her mother was shot in the left arm as she tried to keep her down.
Estrella and her sister are especially cherished after Sosa lost 14 babies before the two were born. The miscarriages were linked to weak cervical tissue. Both of the girls were premature and spent weeks in the hospital before they could come home.
Causes of the increase?
Ceartas said it’s hard to pinpoint why gun violence is rising, but the COVID-19 pandemic has added stress, including job loss, to families across the state.
The task force data covers the first year of the pandemic when schools, churches and community groups went virtual. Meanwhile gun sales soared, with a nearly 68% increase in federal background checks for people seeking firearms and explosives in North Carolina, according to FBI statistics.
Many first-time gun owners may not store their guns properly, providing access to curious toddlers, teens who can sell them for money, or children who want to hurt themselves or others, Ceartas said.
The N&O has previously reported a 19% increase in kids 15 and under being charged with nonviolent firearm offenses in the fiscal year that ended in June compared to three years ago.
Even before the increase in gun sales, safe gun storage was a problem, Ceartas said. About five years ago, the organization found 1 in 3 North Carolina parents own guns and more than 1 in 4 of those guns are unsecured.
‘Don’t let me die, Grandma’
After the shooting, Maldonado’s husband took off through a neighbor’s backyard to the home. Maldonado, who has arthritis in her feet, slipped on her blue cotton housecoat, some slippers and jumped in her car.
She found her granddaughter bleeding and lying on a couch, with her head on her mother’s lap.
“Help me Grandma! Help me!” Maldonado remembered her saying. “Lord am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Don’t let me die, Grandma.”
Maldonado’s adrenaline took over, she said.
She drove to where the shooting had occurred. She yelled at the people she thought were responsible.
“Y’all just shot up my daughter’s car! Y’all shot my daughter and my granddaughter!” she yelled. “You better just pray they don’t die.”
Maldonado returned to her relatives’ home as Sosa and Estrella were being loaded into an ambulance.
Estrella continued to beg everyone not to let her die.
At the hospital in Lumberton, 15 minutes away, doctors put the girl on a ventilator, with clear tubes running out of her mouth. She was then airlifted to UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, her grandparents standing in the hospital hall to catch a glimpse of her as she was carried to the helicopter.
“It like to tore me up,” her grandmother said, the night still haunting her when she tries to go to sleep.
Potential solutions
The N.C. Child Fatality Task force was created 30 years ago to advise the governor and General Assembly.
One of its recommendations this year includes raising awareness about safe firearm storage and distributing gun locks. The program would cost $155,700 for two years.
The N.C. House has passed related House Bill 427, but the Senate hasn’t taken it up yet. The House included funding for the program in its budget proposal, but not the Senate, said Kella Hatcher, the task force’s executive director.
Republican Sen. Danny Britt represents Robeson County, where Estrella was shot.
“As a father and a gun owner, I believe that it is imperative to practice proper gun safety,” he wrote in a statement.
“The Senate does not usually consider bills with appropriations outside of the budget, which is why House Bill 427 did not move,” he wrote. Legislative leaders and Cooper are negotiating a final budget, and Britt hopes they can come to a compromise, he wrote.
But he added: “I am more concerned with the high infant mortality rates in Robeson County. Unfortunately, Gov. Cooper vetoed funding to support families and decrease the infant mortality rate.”
Free gun safety education options
While the state may not have a program, groups have been working to educate the public and provide gun locks.
“It’s a service that we provide because we are trying to keep our kids safe,” said Madhavi Krevat, a volunteer leader in the North Carolina chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
The group’s Be SMART campaign advises parents to:
▪ Secure all guns in homes and vehicles. Unsecured guns in cars are easily stolen, Krevat pointed out.
▪ Model responsible behavior around guns, including using gun locks.
▪ Ask about unsecured guns when children visit other homes.
▪ Recognize the role guns play in suicide, a leading cause of death in children.
“Especially these days, children are in a bit of crisis,” Krevat said. The pandemic and the debate about masks has put more pressure on kids.
▪ Tell others about these steps.
Will she live?
Maldonado and her husband couldn’t go inside the Chapel Hill hospital, so they stayed in a motel.
Estrella was taken off the ventilator after about 24 hours.
Medical officials told the family the moment was critical.
“I went to pieces,” said Maldonado. “Because, you know, when they take you off the ventilator and you’re not breathing, that’s it.”
About an hour later, her daughter called her crying.
“This is it,” Maldonado thought to herself: She’s gone.
Instead her daughter turned the camera phone around to show Estrella breathing on her own. “Mama, Mama, Mama, just look,” she said,
“All I could do was shout and praise God and thank God for not taking her,” Maldonado said.
“I’m telling you, that was the best feeling.”
Doctors removed two bullets from Estrella’s back, and her mother was able to pull out a third as it worked its way toward her skin. The bullet that shattered in her head couldn’t be reached and remains.
Estrella went home after five nights in the hospital.
Four people ages 14 to 21 have been charged in the shooting, according to the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office. Maldonado said the family’s car looks like another silver Cadillac suspected to be involved in another shooting.
Other gun violence solutions
Solutions to gun violence often get mired in partisan debates on improving background checks and confiscating guns from people in crisis.
But there are community programs such as violence intervention, that have been proven effective, Ceartas said. She points to Durham’s Bull City United and a similar program started in Winston-Salem.
The programs take a public health approach to gun violence, trying to stop the spread by sending people into neighborhoods to serve high-risk individuals and discourage potential shooters from retaliating.
“The cycle of retaliation hunts down people on the street and can spill over into the schools, like what happened in Winston-Salem when a student was shot and killed,” Ceartas said.
The Durham City Council allocated $935,000 this year to expand Bull City United from two to six census tracts.
State and counties can use American Rescue Plan funds, federal COVID-relief money, to pay for these programs, Ceartas said.
Stephanie Harrison, founder of Stop Killing Our Children, a Charlotte-area support group for people who have lost family members, said community groups should focus on key questions.
“How are they getting these guns? Why do these kids feel like they need guns? And what can we do to get these guns off the street?” she said.
But grassroots organizations, such as hers and the Charlotte Area Peacekeepers hotline, which seeks to broker peace in area conflicts, need more support, she said.
“We can’t do it by ourselves,” she said.
The return home
Estrella survived the shooting, but she isn’t the same, her grandmother said.
Before, the 9-year-old was outgoing and loving. She played with her dogs, German shepherds and Rottweilers, rode four-wheelers and was smart.
Now, “she actually has the mind of a smaller child,” Maldonado said. “She doesn’t know how to tie shoes, nothing like that.“
When her grandparents go to hold her, she says no. She has headaches and tires easily. She doesn’t want to wash her hair because it hurts.
“There is not a day that goes by that this baby is not in pain,” Maldonado said.
And the pain is not limited to the 9-year-old.
Estrella’s sister cries all the time, worried she didn’t do enough to protect her sister, Maldonado said.
The family is scared to leave their home, said Maldonado, who only sleeps three to four hours a night.
“There is not a day we don’t cry,” she said. “I don’t think we are ever going to be same.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 7:00 AM with the headline "NC child firearm deaths, injuries jumped in 2020. What experts say would save lives."
