A 46-year old Texas man is under arrest after admitting he shot an eight-year old boy in the face. The child, Donald Maiden Jr., known to his friends as “DJ,” just celebrated his birthday on Sunday. On Tuesday, he was playing tag with friends in a parking lot by his home in Dallas when he was shot.
The accused gunman, Brian Cloninger, reportedly told police, “Yes I shot that kid,” according to local news reports. No reason for the attack has been given. The boy reportedly is in “critical but stable condition.”
The gunman was waving his gun at people before the shooting, according to the Dallas Morning News, which also reports Cloninger was charged with “injury to a child,” and is being held on a $2.2 million bond in the Dallas County jail.
Maiden remains in critical but stable condition after undergoing surgery at Children’s Medical Center Dallas, according to Dallas police.
“His mouth was just hanging off and it was just a big hole,†the child’s mother, Latamarin Locklin, told CBS 11 News in Dallas:
Locklin remembers a neighbor urging her to put pressure on her son’s mouth. “ I just threw him on the couch and laid him in my arms and put pressure on his mouth with the towel.â€
“When I first saw him in ICU I started crying,†Donald Maiden, Sr. said of his son. DJ’s father was working in Louisiana. The boy was in a medically-induced coma when Dad first saw him. “I just put my head down in his bed and was holding his hand at the same time. And he opened his eyes. And when I raised back up I looked and there were tears rolling down his eyes and it gave me a little bit of spirit in my heart. It was joy, I guess he was kind of happy to know I was there. “
DJ was shot “out of the blue,†according to his mom, by a man driving a pickup truck who’d been hanging around her apartment complex.
DJ’s mother says, “I just want to know why. Why?â€
Here, a news report via CBS News:
Hat tip: The Raw Story