“My heart dropped,” the boy’s mother, Mary Jane Gonzales, tells Inside Edition.
A Texas 9-year-old took cover as bullets from a drive-by shooting flew into the living room of his home.
Erol Hill was playing with his French bulldogs when gunshots rang out just before 7 p.m. on May 1. His mother, Mary Jane Gonzales, was in the bedroom.
“My heart dropped,” Mary Jane tells Inside Edition.
As Erol ducked for cover in the living room, a group of children outside ran for cover from the hail of bullets spraying the Fort Worth apartment complex. Six children, ages 3 to 19, suffered gunshot wounds in the incident, police said.
“I felt terrified about what happened to those children,” Erol tells Inside Edition.
Video from inside the home shows Erol running to his parent's bedroom, crouching the entire way. The fourth-grader is happy to be alive but is haunted by the incident, his mother says.
A GoFundMe page has been set up by Mary Jane Gonzales to help the family move to a safer environment.
"The fear we felt that night still haunts us, especially our children, who are now scared to stay in the place we've called home for four years... With full-time work and school commitments, we never imagined having to find a new home on such short notice, especially after just signing a year-long lease," the campaign's page reads. "We're reaching out to our community for support to help us move to a safer environment where our children can feel secure again. Any contribution, no matter how small, will make a huge difference in our lives. Your generosity will help us heal from this trauma and start anew."
To date, $710 of the family's $5,000 goal has been raised.
