Metro

Stray bullet hits 5-year-old Bronx ‘ballerina’ sweetie

Hailey Dominguez

Hailey Dominguez

An adorable 5-year-old Bronx girl was hit in the stomach by a stray bullet yesterday as her family arrived home from a baby shower, police said.

Hailey Dominguez — who had been dancing like a ballerina at the party just hours earlier — didn’t say a word as she held herself tightly after taking the slug to the belly.

“She wasn’t crying,” said a neighbor, Carmen Rosario. “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.’’

A neighborhood teen was busted last night.

Hailey and her mom and siblings were walking into their Hughes Avenue building in Tremont at about 1 a.m. when she was shot by a gunman apparently aiming for a rival in a nearby building.

Hailey’s stunned sister, Keyla Rosario, 15, held her head in disbelief as she described the chaotic scene.

Their brother, Jayden Miranda, 7, formed a gun with his thumb and index finger as he described the frightening moments.

“We didn’t know she got shot,” Keyla said. “We were crying. Not her.”

Jayden added that he thought his little sister was “very brave.”

Relatives said they at first thought Hailey had fainted on the steps of their building. It wasn’t until they were carrying her to the family’s fifth-floor apartment that they realized she had been shot.

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 put in a medically induced coma. She was in stable condition.

Her stepfather, José Rosario, said the bullet missed her ribs and spinal cord but hit a lung.

Cops charged Angel Morales, 18, with attempted murder and weapons possession. Morales lives on East 197th Street, about a block away from the scene.

Witnesses said that a group of men approached a street corner near the building and that one pulled a gun and began firing. A source said no one in the family was the intended target.

Hours after the gunfire, party favors with “It’s a boy’’ on them still littered the courtyard.

“She was dancing before, at the party,” said Edwin Roman, 23, her mother’s boyfriend. “She liked to dance. She was a little ballerina.”

Rosario, the neighbor, said she was playing cards with her husband just before they heard the shots.

“We didn’t pay it much mind. They didn’t sound close,’’ she said, describing gunfire in the neighborhood as common.

Afterward, she “heard a girl screaming, ‘Oh, my God! Call 911!’ ”

Hailey’s mom suffered an anxiety attack and was briefly hospitalized, a relative said.

Until the shooting, all Hailey could think about was a Nintendo 3DS and ballerina stuff she wanted for Christmas, Roman said.

“I feel so bad,” he added. “I’ve been taking care of her since she was 2. I’m taking it easy now since she’s stable, I can sleep. I’ve been up all night.”

He said they had already been thinking about moving out of the area, to someplace safer.