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'I was screaming my kids, my kids!': Philly mass shooting survivor recalls life-changing night

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Updated  July 13, 2023 11:21pm EDT
Philadelphia
FOX 29 Philadelphia

'I was screaming my kids, my kids!': Philly mass shooting survivor recalls life-changing night

The mother and two boys who survived the Southwest Philadlephia mass shooting talks about being face-to-face with the shooter and the injuries she and her sons have endured.

SOUTHWEST PHILADELPHIA - Speaking out after the unimaginable, a single mother, Octavia Brown, and her two boys survived the deadly mass shooting rampage in Kingsessing earlier in July, saying one of the two boys was shot three times.

She was driving with her boys in the backseat along 56th Street, when she came face-to-face with the shooter.

"I just remember hearing someone yelling, or something. My window was cracked, so I kinda slowed down a little bit and I wound up looking forward and I seen him standing in front of my car with a big rifle," Brown recalled.

Octavia was driving with her 10-year-old niece in the front seat and her twin two-year-old boys in the backseat on July 3rd, simply heading to her stepmom’s house for a cookout, when the shooter police identified as Kimbrady Carriker began his shooting spree in Kingsessing.

"He was masked up with a vest and then he started shooting," Brown described the situation. "My first instinct was to get away. Me and my kids. Get away. He was so close to me I could have reached out my hand and touched him."

PHILADELPHIA MASS SHOOTING:

Brown continued, "The first couple of shots was straight through the windshield and when I pushed on the gas, he wound up jumping out the way a little bit and he ended up shooting the whole side of the driver side. He was behind me on the driver side. That’s how he wound up getting hit in the leg."

Two-year-old Kir, holding onto his mom as she recounted the events from the night, was shot three times in the left leg, the bullets going straight through as he was strapped into his car seat. "As I was driving off, he was still shooting at my car. He shot the back window out and everything."

Brown’s niece miraculously unscathed as she was able to duck down under the dashboard of the car during the shooting, but bullet fragments and shattered glass wound up slicing both Brown and twin brother Jy-Fir.

"So, I had glass in my eye. I still have a piece in my eye under my face," Brown said. "I couldn’t see. It was three big pieces they removed. It’s still blurry."

Speaking of her son’s injury, Brown went on, "He had a piece of bullet fragment in his head and it pushed out and he had a tiny piece under his left eye."

"What was going through your head in that moment," FOX 29’s Shaynah Ferreira asked.

"It was the longest ride to the hospital ever. I just seen blood on them, so I didn’t know. I was just in shock," Brown replied.

She says in the chaos of it all, she managed to flag down a police officer who hopped in her car and rushed them to a nearby hospital.

"I just remember screaming, ‘We have to get to the hospital! My kids, my kids!’" Octavia recalled. "Even when I got away and flagged the cop down, you could still hear a lot of gunshots. He was still shooting."

The shooting rampage on 56th and Chester claimed the lives of five people in Southwest Philadelphia, leaving this mother grateful to still be here to tell the story with her two boys. However, the trauma in the aftermath of it all is undeniable. Especially for two-year-old Kir.

"He’s constantly wetting himself. The loud noises bother him. He’s putting a blanket over his head. He’s not sleeping," Brown explained.

The toddler left bandaged up and in pain, afraid to bend his little legs and, as his mom says, seems fearful of walking. "Even if I touch him, he will snatch his leg back, but he’s not walking. They told me he should be walking by Tuesday and he hasn’t."

With that, Brown says her main concern is being present for her two boys who need all of the support and attention they can get. "My kids are all I got. I wanna make sure the wellbeing of my kids is okay. Get him walking again."

Anyone wishing to contribute to aid Octavia and her boys through this traumatic time, can do so at the GoFundMe account, here.