An adorable 5-year-old girl on her way home from a family baby shower was shot in the stomach by a stray bullet early this morning in front of her Bronx apartment building, police said.
Relatives thought young Hailey Dominguez had fainted on the steps in the Hughes Avenue courtyard outside her apartment shortly before 1 a.m. They tried to carry her to the fifth-floor apartment where she lived before they realized she had been shot.
“We didn’t know she got shot,” said Keyla Rosario, the victim’s 15-year-old sister. “We were crying, not her.”
The girl’s mother, Gloria Miranda, 34, called 911, and Hailey was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital then transferred to Columbia Presbyterian, where she was listed in stable condition after being placed in an induced coma.
The girl’s stepfather, Jose Rosario, said the bullet missed Hailey’s ribs and spinal cord but hit her in a lung.
Cops tonight arrested alleged shooter Angel Morales, 18, of The Bronx, and charged him with attempted murder and weapons possession.
Witnesses said a group of men approached a nearby street corner in the Tremont section and began shooting at apparent rivals in a nearby building.
Hours after the gunfire, “It’s a boy’’ party favors from the baby shower that the family had attended in Manhattan still littered the building’s courtyard.
“She was dancing before at the party,” said Edwin Roman, 23, Miranda’s boyfriend. “She liked to dance, she was a little ballerina.”
Neighbor Carmen Rosario said she was playing cards with her husband when “we heard shots.”
“We didn’t pay it much mind,’’ she said. “They didn’t sound close. I heard a girl screaming, ‘Oh my God, call 911!’ “
When she opened the door, Rosario said she saw Hailey holding herself, like she was afraid.
“She wasn’t crying,” she said. “I sat next to her for a few minutes and right away the officers came. The officers opened her coat, and they saw blood, and they took off.”
“That little girl was so brave,” Rosario added. “If I get to see her again I have to commend her.”