6-year-old in Arlington nearly hit by stray bullet from New Year's Eve celebratory gunfire
ARLINGTON, Texas - A 6-year-old girl in Arlington was nearly hit by a stray bullet after New Year's Eve celebratory gunfire ripped through her bedroom window.
It's just one of several issues tied to celebratory gunfire in the city that night.
That girl's mother told FOX 4 about the trauma it caused her daughter.
The bullet hit inside an Arlington home that’s north of I-30 and east of Green Oaks.
The mother of the 6-year-old said her daughter plays where the bullet struck.
"You’re shooting your gun having a good ol’ time. Well, you changed my daughter’s life. You traumatized my kid," Joyce Atayde said.
She was winding down with her husband just after ringing in the new year.
"You know, listening to music, it was 1 a.m. My daughter was asleep in her bed, she’s 6 years old. And she came out of her room panicked, and she never wakes up in the middle of the night, going, ‘There’s a loud boom in my room, I’m scared,’" Atayde recalled.
They didn’t think too much of it.
"And we’re like, ‘Oh, baby, it’s probably a tree branch hitting our roof,’ because it was windy that night," she said.
But once they walked into her room, they saw a broken window and a bullet.
"And at first, we didn’t know what was going on. Like, didn’t know if someone was outside of our house shooting actively at us or what," she added.
They called police, but after waiting three hours for officers to respond, they went to bed. It was a shaky night for their 6-year-old.
"You know, we’ve raised her to learn that when something bad happens, you call the police and they’re going to come help you, and she’s like, ‘Mommy, where are the police? Why can’t they come?’"
Atayde said she has no complaints with police, and they stopped by the following day. The issue is they were just overwhelmed, she said.
"Unfortunately, it took us a little while to get out there because we had a lot of priority calls," said Arlington PD Lt. Christopher Cook.
Those priority calls were a series of New Year’s Eve shootings.
A 4-year-old was shot in the head when adults caring for him were reportedly dancing and a gun accidentally went off. The child later died at a hospital.
RELATED: Police: Adults lied about fatal shooting of 4-year-old Arlington boy
Blanca Guerra was reportedly accidentally shot and killed by her boyfriend when he fired celebratory gunfire, and a group of men were arrested after police said they shot at an officer and two security guards, grazing one of the guards, after police initially showed up to the Las Lomas Apartments for reports of celebratory gunshots.
"And so all of these cases were preventable, avoidable, if people would’ve done the right thing and made the right decision," Cook said.
Police said celebratory gunfire to ring in the new year has become all-too-common.
"You know, we have the old adage, what goes up must come down, and these bullets they will come in and break windows," Cook explained. "We are really lucky that this child was OK."
"And she was sleeping less than eight-feet away from where it landed," Atayde said.
If the child hadn’t been sleeping, she may have been where the bullet came in. In fact, it hit one of her coloring books.
"She sits and colors [there]. She plays with her dolls," Atayde said.
Atayde wants people to learn from their story that hit too close to home.
"Everything they do has consequences to somebody else," she added.
Police believe the bullet could’ve came from as far as a mile away.
Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Arlington police.