Chicago Police Install Pool For 6-Year Old Shooting Victim As A Gift
CHICAGO (CBS) -- There may not have been fire at 60th and South Paulina, but firefighters responded Thursday for a special need for water.
Chicago police installed a pool for a 6-year old shooting victim as a gift and act to wash away the memories of that terrible day.
"I'm ready to get in," Tacarra Morgan said.
She is finally ready to swim, CBS 2's Jeremy Ross reports, but back on July 19, her mother Carolyn Morris was prepared for her to die.
"We were just sitting on the porch," Morris said. "Gunshot wounds, gunshots, gunshots."
A stray bullet hit 6-year-old Morris while she was sitting on her grandparent's front porch with her mother and grandmother that afternoon.
A shooting unfolded a block north of the house, the 6000 block of South Paulina Street around 1 p.m. A shooter in a SUV followed a group on foot southbound and opened fire again, when Morgan was struck in the stomach by a bullet.
Sergeant Elis Padilla visited Morgan in the hospital.
"She had been constantly keeping in touch with me," said mother, Carolyn Morris.
The sergeant was one of several at the shooting scene, with terrible images from that day stuck with them.
The same officers from the scene set up a $130 pool for Morgan, as a way to help wash those memories away. Sergeant Padilla paid for the cost of the pool out of her own pocket.
Like assembling the pool, emotional healing for the young gunshot victim will be a process.
"She's just afraid," Morris said. When she hears loud noises outside the house, she goes running.
The family believes getting Tacarra Morgan out in the water is a way to paddle towards normalcy.
"That is wonderful what they did for my daughter," Morris said. "I appreciate everything they have done for my daughter."
The family is in the process of getting Morgan some counseling. Morgan has received approval from her doctor to get in the water and take a swim.
