Parents of toddler struck by falling bullet in Independence seek justice

By Karli Olson

Click here for updates on this story

    INDEPENDENCE, Oregon (KPTV) — Samantha and Zach sat at a picnic table in an Albany park on Wednesday.

Under blue skies, the mood was anything but sunny.

“I still feel like I’m suffocating, I’ve been nauseated since it happened,” Samantha said.

‘It’- referring to the horror they experienced nearly a month ago on the Fourth of July, when their 2-year-old daughter was struck by a stray bullet which fell from the sky. It happened as they were walking back to their car after the fireworks display in Independence.

The Fourth is normally a favorite family holiday. On her last birthday, their daughter answered the question ‘what’s your favorite holiday?’ with ‘fireworks!’. This year was no different.

“She was enjoying herself and having fun, a lot of wows and ohs at the fireworks,” Zach said.

As they pulled their daughter in a wagon through the crowd down Monmouth Street, that joy quickly turned to horror.

“I was maybe 12 inches away from her when I saw her body go stiff, and I didn’t know what was happening,” Samantha said through tears. “She just started to scream, and I’ve never heard her scream like that.”

They said a nurse happened to be nearby and was able to provide them with a sterile pack of gauze for the bleeding before they pushed their way through the mass of people to get to the hospital.

There, the bullet was removed, and their daughter was left with a gaping wound, unable to be stitched due to the risk of infection.

Since then, it’s been days of re-bandaging her leg, helping her through constant nightmares, and trying to explain the situation in a way she can understand.

“She says ‘mama I have a bullet and it went all the way through,’ and I say yeah baby, and I’m so sorry that this horrible thing happened to you, and you’re so brave,” Samantha said.

It’s been nearly a month since the horror of that night, and while their daughter is expected to make a full recovery, police have not been able to find the person who did it.

An agonizing wait for the family, who is now offering a $2,500 reward on top of the $2,500 offered from the Crime Stoppers group for anyone who supplies a tip that leads to an arrest.

“Somebody needs to come forward and take accountability and show my daughter that people can apologize when they make horrific mistakes, and they can apologize for the way they violated her body and traumatized our family,” Samantha said.

According to the National Library of Medicine, around a third of people who are struck by falling bullets are killed, and Samantha and Zach know their daughter could have been next.

“Our daughter asks why it happened to her,” Samantha said. “And there’s only one person who knows the answer to that question, so we need their help to, to help our daughter process through this.”

“That was a sea of people, it could’ve landed on anybody,” she added. “The community needs to be aware that the community at large is not safe with someone who would act so thoughtlessly and so negligently. It fell on us, but it could’ve been any one of the people that we ran into and danced with at this event, it could’ve been anyone’s daughter or son or mother or father.”

If you have any information about this incident, you can contact the Independence Police Department at 503-838-1214.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.