MILWAUKEE COUNTY

Bullets fired into home wound 12-year-old girl who was sitting on her bed watching Netflix

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A 12-year-old girl was shot in the leg and hand as bullets pierced her home around midnight Saturday as she sat on her bed watching Netflix.

Tamishay Washington is unable to walk and will likely remain in the hospital overnight, her mother, Tanaka Brooks, said Sunday.

"I'm so frustrated," Brooks said. "She's my baby. ... I was asleep and I wake up to her screaming, 'I been shot. I been shot.’ "

Tamishay Washington, 12, was shot in the leg and hand when bullets sprayed her home on the 3800 block of West Roosevelt Drive.

The shooting occurred at 12:04 a.m. Sunday at their home near North 38th Street and West Roosevelt Drive.

Brooks said there was a bullet hole in the laptop that Washington was using to watch Netflix.

Tamishay's room is on the second floor, above a garage that also had bullet holes through a wall. A car in the garage also had bullet holes.

And there were multiple bullet holes along a window near the first-floor living room of the house.

Terrell Singleton describes the scene where a bullet came through and struck 12-year-old Tamishay Washington in her bedroom.

Brooks was in the home with her fiancé, Terrell Singleton, who was also asleep at the time. The couple has lived in the home for 11 years.

"It's just sad. It's screwed up. Yesterday we were just talking about how stuff like this happens. ... I didn't think it was gonna happen to us," Singleton said.

Brooks said she believes she knows who shot at the home and thinks she was the target.

Police said the investigation continues.

Terrell Singleton describes the scene where bullets came through and struck Tamishay Washington, 12, as she watched Netflix in her room. Singleton is the fiancé of Tanaka Brooks, Tamishay's mother. A bullet hole, lower left, is marked as evidence.

Another child was shot in the leg a few weeks ago in an apparent road rage incident. Around the same time, a 3-year-old girl was killed in a shooting that was spurred by road rage.

Children in Milwaukee have been victims of bullets that were not intended for them numerous times in the last five years.

In 2018, 13-year-old Sandra Parks was killed when bullets entered her home.

In 2014, three children, ages 10, 5 and 1, were killed by stray bullets. Two of those children were in a family member's home when they were shot. Sierra Guyton, 10, was at a playground when she was shot.

In 2018, the last year for which full-year figures are available, there were 475 nonfatal shooting victims. Of them, 53 were children age 17 or younger.

Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.