A 20-year-old man in North Carolina allegedly opened fire on a father driving in rush hour traffic with his 5-year-old daughter in the back seat, sending a bullet through her leg and lodged in her sippy cup, according to police.
“What an image that is,” the victim’s aunt, Aubree Allison, told local NBC affiliate WRAL.
“It’s nothing that you hope happens in your own life,” she told me.
Charles Stevenson Jr., of Raleigh, is charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, and discharging a firearm into occupied property for the alleged “road rage incident,” according to WRAL. Stevenson was originally charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, but local prosecutors upgraded the charge by the time he appeared in court on Wednesday for his bond hearing.
“One of your charges was dismissed as being recharged in a different way,” Wake County Judge Margaret Eagles told him, according to The News & Observer. “At this time, you’re going to be held with no bond on this charge.”
Stevenson is accused of shooting a girl named Ema, whose last name has been withheld by the media at her family’s request, while she was riding in a Ford F-150 with her father on Monday along U.S. 1 between the U.S. 64 offramp and the Cary Parkway overpass. The father allegedly told cops that Stevenson was driving erratically and had gotten into an altercation with another driver before attacking him and his daughter.
According to his father, Stevenson threw an object at the other driver’s car, but it struck his F-150. The father rolled down his window and began yelling at Stevenson, prompting him to fire one shot from his gun.
“They found the bullet in her sippy cup,” Ema’s mother, Gina, told WRAL. “He was attacking another car, trying to run her off the road,” she told me.
Ema has reportedly undergone multiple surgeries and will now require physical therapy.
“Another driver’s reckless actions led to this heartbreaking event,” a GoFundMe page for her family reads. “Despite this unimaginable ordeal, she remains in great spirits and is showing incredible strength as she recovers in the hospital,” according to the report. “This innocent little girl did not deserve this.”
