Girl Wounded at Disneyland Improves

Anaheim police said Monday they may never know who fired the shot Sunday that hit an 8-year-old Downey girl visiting Disneyland. But they said they believe the shot was fired in the air by someone outside the park.

Meanwhile, Nayeli Diana Placentia’s condition was upgraded from guarded to fair. She is expected to be hospitalized several more days.

“She’s alert and awake,” said Fran Tardiff, hospital spokeswoman at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. “She’s doing real good. She’s a good, quiet little girl and very cooperative, very pleasant.”

Surgeons removed a medium-caliber bullet that embedded in the lower right portion of the child’s back as she rode the Disneyland Railroad in the Fantasyland section of the Anaheim park.

Anaheim Police Lt. Marc Hedgpeth said the angle of the bullet’s trajectory shows it originated from the north to northwest, but investigators may never know exactly where it came from because of the heavy concentration of homes, hotels, motels and other businesses in that area.

“Right now, we can’t even hazard a guess where it came from,” Hedgpeth said. “All we can say is that someone fired a gun into the air.”

Disneyland is bordered by several neighborhoods where both residents and police say guns are often fired into the air, especially during holidays. Hedgpeth said the bullets can travel as far as a mile before they return to the ground.

Disneyland spokesman Bob Roth said the train carrying Nayeli and her parents, Jose and Carmen Ramirez, was pulling to a stop at the Videopolis train station about 6:08 p.m. Sunday when the youngster complained of a pain in her back. Disneyland officials rushed her to Western Medical Center in Anaheim, where doctors discovered she had been struck by a bullet. She was transferred immediately to the trauma center at UC Irvine Medical Center. Roth said park officials halted the Disneyland Railroad temporarily while they examined the rear car in which Nayeli had been riding. Officials found a bullet hole through the canvas roof.

The ride was reopened the same evening, and the park continued normal operations, Roth said. He added that Disneyland has offered to help pay the girl’s medical bills, which are partially covered by her family’s insurance. “Obviously, we feel bad about their experience,” Roth said.

Roth said the incident is the first time a park patron has been struck by an errant bullet, although there have been two homicides in Disneyland’s 35-year history. A man was fatally stabbed during an argument in 1984, and another man was shot to death in the Disneyland parking lot in 1987.