Shooting victim Javan, 8, off ventilator

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Javan Price, who was shot in the head last Tuesday night, is now breathing on his own, his mother told Newsday.

Price was shot in Morvant while gunmen chasing a 38-year-old man from the area kept shooting as he ran through a crowd of children, who tried to avoid being hit. Eusibio Roberts, 49, was killed. Price and another child, an 11-year-old boy, were shot, along with the man the gunmen were chasing.

In a phone interview with Newsday last Thursday, Price’s mother Marcia Burke said Javan had surgery that day and doctors had given her encouraging news.

Since being shot he has been warded in the intensive care unit of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex. He was removed from the ventilator on Sunday.

Javan suffered a fractured skull as a result of the shooting when the bullet passed through his head.

The other child was shot twice in the leg. One bullet went right through his leg and the other lodged near a bone.

About the shooting

Police reported that at about 7 pm on August 16, gunmen got out of a grey Nissan AD wagon at Mon Repos, Morvant and started shooting at two men, killing Roberts instantly.

The killers then chased the Morvant man, who ran through a basketball court where Javan and other children were training for a football competition.

The killers kept shooting, hitting Javan in the left side of his head. He collapsed near a track leading to his home.

Police believe the 38-year-old man was the intended target.

That shooting was the second incident this month in which children were casualties. On August 1, a ten-year-old girl was among eight people victims of a shootout at Sixth Avenue, Malick. The bullet hit her left leg, breaking a bone. She has since been discharged from hospital.