Shooting Scars Heal : ‘Miracle Baby’ Doesn’t Falter; Recovery Almost 90%

The 3-year-old girl puts a tape in the cassette player and grabs an ersatz microphone. Turning on the recorder, she pretends she is a famous singer, dancing around the living-room coffee table.

Watching is a smiling Bertha Burns, who says it is hard to believe that six months ago this cheerful imp of a daughter was in a coma at Children’s Hospital after being shot in the head by a 5-year-old playmate.

A week after Mary Ann Burns was released from intensive care, her doctors, nurses and the media were calling her a “miracle baby” because of her speedy recovery.

“When people tell me it’s a miracle, I say, ‘Well, yes, it is a miracle that God let her stay with us. I’m very happy,’ ” Burns said.

‘It’s an Incredible Thing’

“It’s an incredible thing. It’s as if nothing had happened.”

Mary Ann is loving, sweet and obedient, although she is a little shy, Burns said.

“She is the same girl,” Burns said. “She is very mischievous, but she is a normal girl.”

Last Thanksgiving, Mary Ann was accidentally shot with a .38-caliber pistol by her playmate, who was showing Mary Ann and her 6-year-old sister, Cheryl, the weapon. She was shot in the left back part of her brain, which controls motor, sensory and speech skills.

The parents of the 5-year-old, Thomas and Irma Molina of Chula Vista, were each sentenced in March to six years’ probation for failing to adequately take care of their children. Their children were placed in foster homes.

Mary Ann was in the hospital for 19 days, during which she had surgery to remove four bullet fragment lodged in the back of her brain.

Recovery Predicted

Dr. Joseph Scheller, who has been Mary Ann’s neurologist at Children’s Hospital since she was released from intensive care in December, predicted then that, within a year, Mary Ann’s recovery would be almost 90%, and that people would not be able to tell she had gone through such an ordeal.

His prediction was right. Scheller and other people close to Mary Ann agree that her speech and motor skills are almost normal now.

“If you saw her in the park now, you’d have no idea that anything ever happened to her,” Scheller said.

Confirming Scheller’s observation, Mary Ann rides her bicycle in the back yard of the apartment building where she now lives in National City, as any other toddler would.

Burns said that, despite the initial horror of the shooting, the accident has not radically changed their lives. Mary Ann does not remember why she has a small scar on the left side of her head, and, when questioned about it, she says she fell.

Doesn’t Want to Scare Her

“Her sister tells her (she was shot), and she says ‘No, Mommy. It’s not true,’ and I tell her it is not true so she won’t be scared,” Burns said.

Although Mary Ann has no recollection of the accident, Burns keeps an album with newspaper clippings about her time in the hospital and a videotape about the incident, both of which she will show Mary Ann when she is old enough to understand.

Burns, who is separated from Mary Ann’s father, acknowledges that she is more protective of her daughter now, but she still lets her go out to play because keeping her at home would be worse for the girl, she said.

“I let her go out, and let her go down to play like a normal girl, but I’m always very aware of what she is doing. I can’t keep her locked up in here,” Burns said. “I protect her more, and I try to give her everything she wants. She is my little baby, and I have to do it, but she still listens to me.”

Each weekday, Mary Ann attends a special school, where she gets speech and task-oriented therapy. She also receives physical therapy.

“In her special classes, her teacher says she is doing very well,” Burns said. “She says everything is going well. For her age, she should be using four or five words per sentence, and she uses three. But her sister didn’t start speaking until she was 3, so I’m not too worried.”

Mary Ann’s mild speech problems and her lack of strength in her right arm are subtle reminders of what, to Burns, seems a distant memory.

“I only wanted my girl to get well, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone until I saw she was going to get well,” she said. “At first I would wake up nights crying, but now I know she is all right.”

Because of her miraculous recovery, Mary Ann was one of the children featured by the Children’s Miracle Network in its annual telethon, which was also broadcast Sunday in China and the Soviet Union.

“I’m glad that people can find out she is doing all right,” Burns said.