The father of a 3-year-old girl who was wounded by a stray bullet as he picked her up from her Brooklyn day care nearly lost his mind when he realized she had been shot.
“I saw the blood,” Teno Aiken, 40, told the Daily News about the moment he realized daughter Teira had been struck. “I just break down right from there, don’t even know what to do. I take out my phone to call 911, I couldn’t even press the 9. Couldn’t even dial it.”
Brave little Teira is expected to fully recovery after the bullet went clean through her shoulder.
The shooter, who has not been caught, was aiming at a 28-year-old man loading his 2-year-old son into a car outside Creative Minds Family Day Care on Riverdale Ave. near Amboy St. in Brownsville about 6 p.m. Friday, police said.
Aiken had just come from a supermarket to pick up his daughter. He held his supermarket bags in one hand and Teira’s hand in the other as they headed out from the day care.
“I notice a guy was there outside,” he said of the shooter’s intended target. “He was picking up a baby also.”
That’s when the gunman emerged.
“That guy come from nowhere up the road and just started firing at him,” Aiken said, still shocked. “And he saw me. Come on! He saw me with a baby, and still firing at that guy!”
Video seen by the Daily News shows Aiken holding his daughter in his arms as he frantically ran along the street. The gunman jumped into a four-door BMW driven by a second man last seen speeding off down Thomas Boyland St., cops said.
“Everything was chaos after that,” Aiken said. “I grabbed the baby up. I tried to get to cover … Everyone started to come out, saying Check yourself, check yourself and the baby.”
Teira was crying but at first Aiken thought he had just jostled her in the mayhem.
“We checked her, we saw a hole here,” he said, gesturing to his right shoulder. “When I tear off her jacket that’s when I saw the blood.”
Day care staffers called 911.
Aiken said that his work as a cop in his native Jamaica couldn’t prepare him for seeing his own flesh and blood hurt.
“When I really break down is when I really saw the blood coming out of her,” he said. “I was a police officer so I’m kind of used to the violence in a certain manner. But it’s when I saw my daughter bleeding, that’s when I really break down.”
Aiken said investigators have found the shooter’s car though an NYPD spokeswoman couldn’t confirm that Sunday afternoon.
Cops have visited the family at Maimonides Medical Center, offering their support and bringing food. Aiken brought his daughter her favorite teddy bears to cheer her up.
“She’s doing good now. She’s playing, she’s moving the arm. They did scans yesterday, and yesterday they also did an MRI,” Aiken said. “None of the veins were damaged and all that. It went right through.”
Doctors are monitoring the wound for swelling.
“She’s a good child. She’s jovial, she’s very active. And she’s very strong,” the proud dad said. “It’s just very sad.”
Aiken, who has older children in Jamaica, came to New York City in 2016 to join relatives and strive for a better life. He and his wife both work six days a week, he as a welder, she as a home health aide.
The violence in their Brownsville neighborhood was taking its toll even before Teira was shot.
“I’m tired … Me and my wife, we’re planning to move. We have to get out of this zone now,” he said. “A couple months ago a guy shot at another guy right in front of the building. It’s just crazy. I don’t see myself raising my child in this neighborhood.”
Through March 20, shootings were actually down 20% in Brownsville’s 73rd precinct this year, with 15 victims compared to 20 by the same point last year.
“It has to stop, man,” Aiken said of the bloodshed. “We work so hard to make everything happen and look at this! He could have killed my baby. Both of us could have died … We have to just thank God that it’s not worse. My baby nearly died in my hand.”
Cops on Saturday released surveillance images of the shooter with his gun drawn and asked the public’s help identifying him and tracking him down.
Anyone with information is asked to call call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls are confidential.
