1-Year-Old Baby Shot Dead In New Orleans While In Babysitter’s Arms

keion-reed-londyn-samuels

After a four hour stand-off with a SWAT team, two women and one man in the crime ravaged Central City neighborhood of New Orleans were taken in for questioning in the murder of 1-year-old Londyn Samuels, reports the Daily Mail.

Baby Londyn was in her 18-year-old babysitter’s arms, who was walking the toddler home from the park, when shots rang out. The young woman was hit twice, reportedly once in the neck and once in the chest, with that bullet exiting and piercing the chest of baby Londyn, according to the Times-Picayune.

“Our community rallies up every time something terrible and tragic like this happens, so please, if you know anything — this happened at a time of the evening when there are people in the streets, there’s people on the street — call Crimestoppers,” NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas said.

“This is the time. This is when the people of New Orleans need to rally up, stand up and say, ‘This is what happened.’ Give us the information. Let us go make these people accountable for what they did,” Serpas said.

Londyn’s father, Keion Reed, 20, said that the babysitter, who managed to make it to a nearby home, called him right after the shooting.

“She said, ‘Kee, we got shot — me and Londyn,’” Reed told NBC News as he made plans for a Sept. 7 funeral. ”In the back of my head, this is a bad dream I haven’t woken up from yet.”

In a tragic twist of irony, Londyn’s mother Andrea Samuels, 22, was working at a non-profit cafe dedicated to anti-violence when the shooting happened.

“I’m hurt,” she said as she choked back sobs. “Because that was my baby.”

According to the Daily Mail, three children under the age of five have been killed in the Central City neighborhood since 2010.