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George Floyd’s 4-year-old niece was hospitalized after she was struck in the torso by gunfire that pierced her family’s Houston home just hours after the new year.
“Daddy, I’ve been hit,” Arianna Delane told her father after several bullets tore through their second-story home just before 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day.
“I was shocked until I seen the blood and I realized my 4-year-old daughter was really hit,” her dad, Derrick Delane, told KTRK-TV. “She didn’t know what was going on. She was asleep.”
Delane slammed the police’s sluggish response to the incident, accusing the cops of taking roughly four hours to arrive after his daughter was shot.
In a statement on Tuesday, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said that he had initiated an investigation into the department’s delay.
“I am aware and have concerns regarding the delayed response time in this incident and have initiated an Internal Affairs investigation,” he said. “I ask the city continue to pray for the child's full recovery and assist in providing information that would lead to the arrest of the suspect or suspects responsible.”
The girl’s injuries were a devastating discovery for a family that less than two years ago was wracked with grief over the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes while detaining him in May 2020.
Arianna had attended racial justice demonstrations in the wake of her uncle’s death. The cop responsible for Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for the brutal killing.
Arianna’s mom drove her to an area hospital where she remains in recovery after undergoing surgery for a punctured lung, liver, and three broken ribs, her family told local outlets.
“She’s healing very fast. The last time I checked on her she was breathing on her own. She was doing really great,” Delane told KPRC-TV.
Houston police said on Tuesday that at least one unidentified person fired the shots into the apartment which was occupied at the time by Arianna and another child, in addition to four adults. Police said they had no description of the suspect and had not identified a motive in the case.
“Why would my house get shot up?” Delane told KTRK-TV. “My daughter don’t know. I can't explain that to her. As the father, you're supposed to protect the kids.”