Taliyah Frazier was killed when gunmen fired into the car she was riding. (Crime scene photo from Metropolitan Nashville Police Department; Inset photo of Taliyah from her obituary)
A 4-year-old girl riding in the backseat of a car was fatally shot, and her 2-year-old brother was grazed in the head when two men got out of their car and fired more than 20 rounds into the car the children were in at an intersection in Nashville, Tennessee, in what detectives say was a “non-random, targeted” shooting.
Taliyah Frazier was in a Chevrolet Malibu on Tuesday evening when the car came under fire as it was stopped at a red light, police said. She was struck in the head. Her 2-year-old brother suffered a non-critical graze wound to his head. His twin brother was uninjured, officials said.
The unidentified 22-year-old driver, the father of the twins, was wounded in the arm and managed to drive to a nearby parking lot, where police and paramedics were summoned. Taliyah died the next day.
Terry Dickson, Taliyah’s great-grandfather, told Nashville’s WKRN he’s devastated.
“Taliyah was like our daughter. Taliyah lived with us. She was here through the weekdays and the weeknights,” said Dickson, the station reported. “She was a cheerful baby, loved everybody.”
In a news release on Wednesday, police said two men in a car next to the Malibu at the red light got out and fired multiple rounds in “a non-random, targeted shooting.” No arrests have been made, and a description of the gunmen was not available. The motive was also not clear.
As the shots were being fired, the driver of the Malibu sped away and drove about three miles to a Family Dollar store where the mother of the children works.
A witness told WKRN was deeply shaken.
“I could tell she was really, really hurt because the back of her shirt was soaked in blood,” the witness said, the station reported. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I was so shaken up. I’ve been to crime scenes but never with babies involved. I was praying for her so hard last night, I just couldn’t believe that evilness was that great. That was just a pure act of evil.”
“Babies. Babies. These were babies.”
Another witness told Nashville’s WSMV4 she and her boyfriend were in the back of a Lyft at the red light when shots rang out, and shrapnel hit their car.
“I was afraid to look,” the witness told the station. “My boyfriend and I slumped down in our seats so we wouldn’t be near the windows. Our Lyft driver immediately sped down Douglas to get away, and we heard continued gunfire all the way down Meridian.”
In the interview with the news station, Dickson directly addressed the gunmen.
“I hoped that they would finally own this, cause they got to do that, not me,” he told the network. “I forgive you. I cannot have hurtful feelings toward you. It’s up to you now to forgive yourself.”