Girl, 4, Critically Injured as Gunfire Pierces Duplex Wall

Four-year-old Shalondra Barrett had just finished her evening bath, slipped on a pink nightgown and kissed her grandmother good night when five shots exploded outside their tiny Pasadena duplex.

Two of the bullets, apparently strays fired during a dispute on the street, pierced the screen on the front window, blasted through the glass, flew across the living room, continued on into the bedroom wall and bored through six inches of plaster.

One dropped to the floor. But the other did not stop until it hit Shalondra’s face, lodging in her cheekbone and leaving her in critical but stable condition Monday at Huntington Memorial Hospital.

“It’s just really a heck of a coincidence,” said Pasadena Police Sgt. Rodney Uyeda. “A real sad circumstance.”

Police, who have no suspects, said the incident occurred about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday as two men on a motorcycle chased two pedestrians on Washington Boulevard in northwest Pasadena.

The pedestrians--identified as Charles Atkins, 22, and Charles Jones, 25--ran down the driveway that leads to Shalondra’s home, half of a small duplex about half a mile from the Rose Bowl. One of the assailants, according to neighbors, fired five times, apparently missing his target.

Both of the men being chased later told detectives that they did not recognize the assailants and did not know why they were being pursued.

Everybody in Shalondra’s apartment--five adults and three children--dropped to the floor as soon as they heard the shots. When it was over, Shalondra was slumped over her grandmother’s prone body, the girl’s head resting on the woman’s chest.

“My baby’s been shot, my baby’s been shot,” cried her grandmother, Sylvia Williams, who began experiencing chest pains and remained under observation Monday in Huntington’s coronary care unit.

Somebody called 911, but relatives decided not to wait for the paramedics and instead picked up Shalondra--who was conscious and alert despite having a hole the size of a dime under left eye--and raced her to the hospital themselves.

“She said, ‘It hurts,’ and I said, ‘I know it hurts, baby,’ ” said Shalondra’s uncle, Scott Thomas, 32, who drove her. “But she’s a strong little girl. She didn’t cry until we got there.”

Doctors were waiting late Monday for swelling in the girl’s wound to subside before deciding when to operate.

Shalondra’s mother, who relatives said is serving a state prison term, called the home on Monday and said she would seek a furlough to visit her family in the hospital.

They described Shalondra, who was born in Pasadena, as a cheerful and precocious child who already knows her ABCs and can count past 100. She has a tiny doll whom she named “Oscar Lalafoot,” and spends hours playing house in a converted camper parked in a neighbor’s back yard.

“She was a little girl at heart, but sometimes she seemed like a little adult,” said a close family friend who lives in the apartment. “Now she’s suffering--just because of some ignorant fool with a pistol in his hands.”