CHICAGO _ Her aunt says Zariah Muhammad is a grown-up in a 6-year-old's body, a girl who would rather sit and watch the news than play with dolls.
So as she sat in her bed at Comer Children's Hospital in Chicago, a bullet still protruding from her head, her mind went straight to her uncle, 22-year-old David McCray, who was also shot as the two played with water balloons outside her grandmother's Park Manor neighborhood house Thursday afternoon.
McCray died from his wounds.
"My uncle wasn't doing nothing. He was laying there asleep, with a lot of blood," Zariah told her family, according to one of her aunts.
"Your uncle saved your life," a family member responded. That seemed to make Zariah feel better.
Just after 2:25 p.m., McCray was in the heat of a water balloon fight with Zariah and about six or seven of her cousins, said Zariah's 23-year-old aunt, Najah Muhammad. The game was an answer to the sticky August heat, and they ran across the lawn of Zariah's grandmother's house in the 6800 block of South Calumet Avenue.
Suddenly, an unknown man approached McCray, Muhammad said Zariah told her family. He asked if McCray knew someone, a name Zariah didn't recognize or couldn't remember. McCray said he didn't know the name. The water balloon fight resumed.
Moments later, the man fired at McCray and hit him in the chest. "There were bullets everywhere," Zariah told her family at the hospital, Muhammad said.
McCray was pronounced dead at St. Bernard Hospital and Healthcare Center, according to Officer Thomas Sweeney, a police spokesman. He leaves behind a 3-year-old daughter.
Zariah was expected to undergo surgery Friday.
Muhammad described Zariah as "the life of the party," a bright child who was sitting up, speaking and smiling at the hospital "all by God's grace."
She's a child forced into adulthood after her father was shot and paralyzed five years ago, when Zariah was a baby, her family said.
Zariah often retells what she knows of the story of her father's tragedy, adding that "he's good" and that "he likes his wheelchair," Muhammad said.
