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'They’re just plain stupid': Woman, 87, grazed by bullet while celebrating new year on her doorstep
Mary Gallagher, 87, says she was simply keeping up a tradition of ringing a bell outside her home shortly after midnight on New Year's Day when she was grazed by a bullet that narrowly missed her head and neck.
PHILADELPHIA - The city of Philadelphia said goodbye to a violent 2022, and unfortunately, 2023 started off on the same foot. Police are investigating more than ten shootings on New Year's Day, including one homicide.
The majority of the shootings happened within hours after midnight—starting off with an 87-year-old woman, simply celebrating on her front doorstep.
"I didn’t do nothing to nobody, why the heck did I get shot?" says Mary Gallagher.
Gallagher, a great-grandmother and known by tight-knit neighbors as the matriarch of her block, says she has a tradition of ringing a bell outside her Port Richmond home of 52 years, shortly after midnight, on New Year’s Day.
She says this year was the last time she will do it.
Mary Gallagher was standing on the doorstep of her Port Richmond home when she was grazed by a bullet, police say.
After speaking with some of her neighbors, Gallagher says it felt like a brick hit her shoulder.
"I touched my shoulder and I looked at my hand, and said, ‘Oh my God, I’m bleeding," she says. "I didn’t know what to do, especially when I seen the bullet, I just sat here looking at the bullet and going, ‘I don’t believe it, I got shot with a bullet.’"
Philadelphia Police say they responded to Gallagher’s home on Salmon Street by 12:15 a.m., where they found her with a graze wound to her shoulder. Gallagher says she went to the hospital and had to get stitches. Fortunately, she was not seriously hurt.
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Police say there was no scene and the bullet was shot in the air from a location they haven’t determined.
Gallagher can’t wrap her head around why someone would do that—and she has some choice words for them.
"They are stupid," she says. "If I had been one way or the other on my step, it could’ve hit me on the neck, because that’s how close it is, or it could’ve hit me on the head and killed me, so they’re just plain stupid, that’s all."
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact the Shooting Investigation Group.