INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WISH) – An 11-year-old girl hit by a bullet intended for a fleeing suspect in a traffic stop was out of the hospital Monday night.

It’s not the first time someone so young has been shot recently in her neighborhood on the near-northwest side.

Makhi Gaines was the 11-year-old girl who was accidentally shot on her side while sitting inside her home in the 1200 block of West 29th Street.

While she and her mother say they forgive the shooter, her mom said, she has had enough of the violence in her neighborhood.

Antionette Lanier’s worst nightmare happened Friday while she was upstairs in her home. “The next thing I know, I hear all of this commotion. I hear a bunch of hollering, so I looked out my window and I see somebody running in their house so I thought somebody was robbing them.”

Her 11-year-old daughter, Makhi, was downstairs on the living room couch. “I was telling her to run to the bathroom because they were shooting, and she just looked at me and she was like ‘I am already shot.’ She was, like, ‘I am already shot,’” Lanier said.

Police said the shooter was a neighbor who Lanier calls a family friend. Officers said he was trying to stop someone who was running from a traffic stop.

“My daughter she forgave him. He has been to see her, they have been there every step of the way. I appreciate him for being a stand up guy. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me or my daughter,” said Lanier.

People who know him say he would never purposefully hurt someone.
“He is nice. He doesn’t bother anybody. He didn’t mean to do it. We are all family around here. This is our comfort zone,” said neighbor Tatyana Davis.

Lanier says she is frustrated because now her daughter is scared to come home. Just recently another child was shot and killed at a home just across the street.

“It is terrible. It is terrible your kids can’t even sit in your living room. It is terrible. I have an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old. They can’t walk down the street. They can’t sit in their house. They can’t play at the park. It’s just … what are you supposed to do?” Lanier said.

Her daughter is working to recover from her injuries. “She (has) got a bullet wound. I can see my daughter’s rib cage,” Lanier said.

Police on Monday had still not releasing information about charges for the suspect fleeing from the traffic stop or the neighbor who shot the gun.