5-year-old girl shot in the foot in Minneapolis

The Minneapolis Police Department is investigating after a 5-year-old girl was shot in the foot early Monday morning.

As ATF agents used a K-9 to find shell casings in the backyard, at the front door a grandmother told FOX 9 the frightening result of those bullets.

“A lot of gunshots and then my granddaughter screaming,” said Lori Melchert, the girl's grandmother. “And there was blood on the floor and she’s showing me her foot’s bleeding. I’m like what the heck just happened?”

What happened is at 6:30 on Monday morning, someone unloaded seven shots into the back of their duplex in the 2100 block of 4th Street North in Minneapolis. The spent casings were found by a clump of trees in the backyard; the bullet holes spanned both the first and second floors. The suspect was gone by the time police arrived. It’s unknown who or what the target was.

Five-year-old Jayda Holmes, asleep in her bed, was hit by one of the bullets that came through the home’s back wall.  Emergency crews took her to Hennepin County Medical Center, where she’s doing well. But her grandmother frets about the stress on a five-year-old’s mind, especially as she begins kindergarten in a few weeks.

“What are you going to do when your friends say, 'Oh Jayda what happened?'  'I got shot.' Interesting conversation for an elementary school for the first day of school,” said Melchert.

This shooting comes less than a week after a 13-year-old girl was shot while in the basement of a home at North 40th and Girard. In that case, it was by intruders. In Jayda’s case, it was from a gunman near the alley.

But, it adds to alarming statistics, that year to year in Minneapolis, the number of gunshot wounds are up 24 percent, from 146 to 179.

Jayda’s grandmother has lived in this area for 30 years and doesn’t want anyone to paint a bad picture of an entire part of the city.  

“What happened today is not North Minneapolis,” she said. “It’s very small part of people that just don’t plain see the value of a human life.”