Mom Shot While Feeding 6-Month-Old, Cop on Last Week of Job Picks Up Crying Baby
As a police officer, you can never know whether the day is going to be slow and uneventful or incredibly stressful. Officers are always one call away from encountering a tragic situation.
Gil Allred of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina knows this better than most. He’s a 26-year veteran of the department, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared for everything.
Allred recently responded to a call about a shooting. A mother had been shot in her home while she was breastfeeding her baby.
“Whenever you have kids involved in a traumatic situation, it always plays on your nerves,” Allred said. When he got to the scene, he was stunned that the baby escaped without a scratch.
The shooter reportedly had a problem with another person in the building, but after he kicked in the door he started firing.
The poor mother and her baby hadn’t been involved at all, and were innocent bystanders who were dragged into someone else’s dispute.
The gunman hit the mother multiple times, but the baby in her arms remained untouched. Did she sacrifice herself to protect her little one? It was not clear, but somehow, miraculously, the baby was unscathed.
The paramedics took the mother to the hospital for treatment and the fire department took the baby. “The fire department couldn’t calm the child down, so they handed her to me,” Allred told WZOC-TV.
Allred has a family of his own and is no stranger to a crying baby. He picked up the child and rocked her until she stopped crying.
“We were able to be a part of that horrific scene and that miracle,” Allred recalled.
He knows that it takes some kind of incredible evil to shoot a woman who is breastfeeding, but it takes a miracle to save the child.
“In that regard, I took it home last night and explained it to my family, then I tried to go and work out,” Allred said. “(I) couldn’t get a good work out in because it just drains you.”
If this incident had happened only a week later, Allred wouldn’t have been around to see it. The 26-year vet is retiring this week.
According to the latest reports, the mother is in critical condition but is still being cared for at the Carolinas Medical Center. We hope she pulls through and is able to be reunited with her little girl.
Even though he was in the right place at the right time, he recognizes that his involvement was just one small move in a far larger plan.
“I hope she realizes one day that she was taken care of,” Allred explained. “Not by me, but by The Almighty.”
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