31 January 2023
GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — A mother spent the last six days in the hospital keeping a close watch on her 8-year-old daughter, a child she put to bed on Jan. 24 and hours later found her shot in the face in the middle of the night.
“I’m thinking ‘you’re going to die in my hands,'” Anna Palmer said.
Palmer held little Aacuria in her lap for six agonizing minutes on Jan. 25, waiting for help to come.
“She just keeps jumping up , and I keep holding her back…she closed her eyes four times on me,” Palmer said. “When she closed her eyes, I thought that was it for her.”
This is what Anna witnessed minutes before a bullet came through the wall of her Autumn Drive home in Greensboro:
“We heard gunshots…but it wasn’t far away so…I thought I was dreaming,” Palmer said. “The two first ones were like two big booms, and it sounded like it was right next to the window.”
The bullets went through a door, a wall and a window.
Palmer and her boyfriend dropped to the ground and crawled across the floor to the bedroom where Aacuria and her two sisters were sleeping.
“When I turned on the light, Aacuria turned around, and her face was blown off. Her whole mouth was gone,” Palmer said.
Palmer tells us they counted close to a dozen bullet holes behind the fridge, in cabinets, behind walls, in the laundry room and outside.
As investigators work to figure out who is responsible for the shooting, Palmer asks herself why her family got caught in the middle of this, especially her daughter.
“Every day I’m in the hospital. I see her. I’m not seeing the stitches. I’m seeing what happened that night,” Palmer said.
She realizes right now a ventilator is her daughter’s lifeline.
“She’s not breathing on her own. It’s just a machine, and if that machine isn’t working, she’s gone,” Palmer said.
Aacuria spends days sedated. Her mom knows her daughter is aware of what’s going on.
“We’ll be talking to her, and you see two tears coming down, and the doctors say it could be the lubricant in the eyes…to me, I don’t think it was,” Palmer said.
They are tears just like the ones that roll down Palmer’s face every day.
“It’s so hard for her….it’s really hard to see her like that,” Palmer said. “Nobody deserves this, and I really need them to find this person.”
Aacuria is scheduled for multiple surgeries to restructure her jaw and is still in critical condition.
Palmer tells FOX8 she won’t let her daughters go back inside their home on Autumn Drive, and she plans to move back to New York to be with family when Aacuria is strong enough.
The Greensboro Guilford County Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5,000 for any information related to the shooting. If you have any information, you can report it anonymously by calling (336) 373-1000.