Mother grabs five-year-old child and runs after bullets fly into her home

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - A Charlotte family is recovering tonight after bullets came flying into their home during a fight between two people just outside their door that turned deadly.

Those rounds narrowly missed two people inside, including a five-year-old autistic child.

The family still has several months left on their lease before they can leave. As you can imagine what happened has been very tough on this family, especially the thought of them losing the only child they have.

“I have never come that close to death in my life.”

Rita Wallace describes the moments when violence showed up at her front door.

“I could hear a struggle, a fight, a tussle. And I could hear my neighbor pleading for his life,” she said.

That’s when shots were fired. One punched a hole through Wallace’s front door missing her by inches. Bullets passed right where her son was playing. He’s five years old and autistic.

“I just jumped across the coffee table and grabbed him quickly.” Wallace described.

She made it to the back bedroom and immediately started checking little D-J over for bullet wounds.

“If I didn’t get a hold of him when I did, he would have been hit,” she said.

She showed us the bullet holes now scarring her home and reminding her of the fear she went through.

“I am just scared to death. And I don’t know what I would have done if anything would have happened to my son.” Wallace recounted.

Little DJ’s therapists won’t even come over for fear of what happened.

“They don’t want to come here, and I don’t blame them,” Wallace explained.

Wallace says the apartment manager put out this letter to residents, but when Rita approached them about breaking their lease, Wallace tells me they wouldn’t let her out of the contract, which has only three months remaining.

“That’s going to leave us in financial ruin. That’s going to ruin our credit.”

WBTV talked with the property manager who told me they absolutely sympathize and are working with the family to get them a new place to stay in another apartment complex.

“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place right now,” Wallace told WBTV.

The shooting that happened at the complex was not the only incident. Three other shootings happened in the Charlotte area in just the past couple of days -- prompting many to wonder what’s going on, including Rita, who is still trying to come to terms with nearly losing her only child.

“Just the fear, the fear when the bullets started to come through this apartment,” she said with tears in her eyes.

While that fear remains, there is also joy. DJ graduates from pre-k in a couple of days. Proud parents will be there to see him and forget for a while what almost was.

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