A 7-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet in Harlem after eating pizza with family remains unable to speak, her anguished mother said Tuesday — as she begged the city to take action on youth violence.
Fatou Keita did show some signs of improvement as she recuperated from surgery, her family keeping vigil at her hospital bed, following the shocking broad daylight shooting Monday, her mother Fatoumata Keita, 51, told The Post.
“She is a brave girl,” Keita said in an exclusive interview. “She is bleeding. She’s moving. She wants to talk.”
The shell-shocked mother then broke down in tears as she said Mayor Eric Adams needed to address gun violence that both victimizes and is carried out by youths.
“We can’t do nothing,” she said. “My daughter is in the hospital, only seven years old. My heart is broken.”
Two teen boys — a 17-year-old and Daniel Idowu, 19 — were arrested after the shooting at around 2:50 p.m. at 146th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and later charged with attempted murder, sources said.
The motive behind the shooting remained unclear Tuesday, but sources said it appeared the gunmen had fired off nine shots at someone before running off.
As the gunshots ricocheted, young Fatou, her 14-year-old brother and father Ahmed were walking down the street, her mother said.
The trio had just finished up eating pizza while on an errand to fix Fatou’s eyeglasses, the mom said.
“She said, ‘Daddy, let’s go. You’re gonna fix my glasses today. I don’t wanna go to school tomorrow, my glasses are not fixed yet,” her mom said.
The family heard the gunshots as they strode near a Starbucks, prompting Ahmed to rush them into a 99-cent store for cover, Fatoumata Keita said.
Unbeknownst to the dad, a bullet had hit his daughter in the stomach.
“She tells her father, ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy,” Keita said.
“The father lifted her clothes. She has the shot here,” the mother said, pointing her abdomen. “She has the shot in the back,” explaining the bullet appeared to have passed through the girl.
NYPD officers arrived and, finding the bloodied Fatou, rushed her to a hospital in a police car rather than risk the live-or-death wait for an ambulance, her mother said.
Keita too dashed to Harlem Hospital after learning about the shooting. She said the sight of her daughter clinging to life shattered her.
“Oh my God. I was on the floor. I was crying,” she said.
“So much…. my daughter… the way I saw my daughter, I was just praying…..hope, she’ll make it.”
After a successful surgery, Fatou has since opened her eyes as her mother clasped her hands.
“I just hold her hands because that’s what they’re telling me — to hold her hand,” she said. “Maybe she’s gonna feel it… ‘It’s mommy, I’m holding your hand.’”
“She is gonna make it.”
Breaking down in tears, Keita said the mayor should “do everything to pass gun legislation.”
She worried about random gun violence taking the lives of her five children as they go to the park, to school.
“I’m going to tell the mayor to do everything to pass gun legislation,” she said, apologizing as she broke down in tears.
“I’m gonna tell the mayor to do something. We have children. Our children go to school, they go to the park. They go everywhere. They want to go to the park. They have to because [they are] children, the children like to play. We can’t keep them in the home,” the distraught woman.
“They need to do something. They need to help us,” Keita said of city officials.
Her fears aren’t unfounded.
New York City has seen 92 shooting victims under 18 so far this year, sources said.
Last year, there were 91 youth victims of gun violence, according to sources.
The number of youth shootings this year puts it on pace to potentially match or surpass the 132 kids who were shot in 2022.
Cops so far this year have recorded 16 shootings in the NYPD’s 32nd Precinct, which covers the block where Fatou was shot, crime data shows. That’s down 30% from the same point last year.
