Father Shot in the Face While Holding His 5-week-Old Baby

Father Shot in the Face While Holding His 5-week-Old Baby

In crime-ridden Oakland, California, a father was shot in the face while holding his five week old baby inside his home in West Oakland, near 7th and Peralta.

The family of four is recovering from the terrifying incident, where at least ten gunshots were fired into their home just before dinner time. The father survived the shooting, but the family is now fearing for their safety and wondering whether the incident was a hate crime.

“I just started screaming ‘get down, get down, get down’! Our daughter, our 4-year-old, was crawling towards me and I moved her towards the kitchen and he put the baby on the floor,” says Jimmie, whose husband was shot. Jimmie has decided to cover his face in interviews about the incident out of concern for his family’s security.

“I saw blood on the floor, and his teeth, and I was trying to get him to turn over so I could see what had happened to him but he wouldn’t allow me to turn him over,” Jimmie added.

His husband and the infant both survived the ordeal, though the baby girl has minor abrasions on her face. The father will have to undergo multiple surgeries to fix his face after the shooting.

“He can make noises but his jaw is fractured here and his teeth were blown out. Thankfully, from what I understand, is that his tongue wasn’t damaged,” Jimmie said about his husband’s injuries, adding: “I’m playing the ‘why’ game right now because we don’t talk to anybody really aside from our immediate neighbors, so I’m trying to figure out if it’s because we’re gay. I just can’t believe this is random.”

Oakland police have not revealed whether the incident is being investigated as a hate crime, and no arrests have been made as of yet.

The family has left their home for the moment for safety reasons, and Jimmie believes that they will need to move to a safer area in the near future. He is hoping that someone with knowledge of the incident will come forward with information.

“It is hard for me to believe that nobody saw anything, that nobody would know something, even somebody who was in the car that didn’t pull the trigger, this is *explicative* up! You can’t just do this to people,” says Jimmie.

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