Piercing Bystanders' Innocence

Each report of another random shooting in the news brings the family a fresh wave of pain. Sometimes, Williams-Crosland thinks about contacting a slain child's mother, as in the case of 8-year-old Chelsea Cromartie in May. But then she hesitates.

"I just imagine how that poor mother felt and I had the feeling of wanting to reach out to her, but it's such a private thing," she said. "There was nothing for me to say to that woman at all. Because it's all trite. It's all not helpful."

Mia's 'Miracle'

The bullet flew up from 14th Street NW and found its place in Mia Adgerson's chest as she paused on a balcony at the Cavalier Apartments. It was July 17, 2001. She was 12, and she felt sure she was going to die.

"I remember everything," Mia said recently as she sat with her parents and grandmother in her Columbia Heights home. "When I first got shot, I started feeling dizzy and I fell on the floor, and then I started holding on to my chest because it was burning. And then I was trying to pull myself up because I was feeling real weak . . . and that's when my cousin started screaming and saying I got shot and call the ambulance. . . .

"I was just praying, 'Please don't let me die.' My mom wasn't there at the time, and I thought I was probably going to die in my cousin's house."

Doctors at Children's Hospital called Mia "a miracle" because of the location of the bullet, said her mother, Dana Adgerson. They decided to leave the bullet in her rib cage because it would be "less detrimental" than removing it, she said.

When Mia returned home to the family's townhouse, in a neighborhood that is in transition and has had its share of gang activity, she could not escape the occasional sounds of gunfire.

"People would be shooting around," Mia began.

"And she would go into hysterics," her father, Donald Adgerson, said. "Every time she'd hear gunshots, she'd go into hysterics, literally. The first time, I didn't know how I was going to calm her down. It was just me and her here by ourselves, goodness gracious."

Mia, who attends a charter high school and makes good grades, admits she likes "staying in the house" now. She cannot exactly explain why -- maybe it was the recovery period, maybe a little depression -- but after she got shot, she quit dancing after years of lessons. "I want to get back," she said.

She has thought often about why she made it and others did not. A religious girl, she said she agrees with her father's advice that everyone should "stay prayed up" because at any moment, a tragedy could happen, another stray bullet could come flying up the street.

"Several members of my family, they just told me I was a blessed child," she said, "and now I have to wait to see what God has in store for me."

Meantime, she is reminded of what has happened every time she has tried to pass through a security checkpoint that has a metal detector. The bullet inside her chest nearly always sets off the alarm. She has learned to carry an explanatory note from her doctor.