Inset: Adriana Jimenez (GoFundMe). Background: The Canoga Park area of Los Angeles, Calif., where Adriana Jimenez was shot in the head while sitting in a car with her sister (KABC/YouTube).
A 22-year-old pregnant California mother, who was raising a 6-year-old daughter and was 16 weeks along with another child, was shot in the head as she sat in a car beside her sister, who was also wounded by gunfire to the throat. Adriana Jimenez was removed from life support Friday after doctors declared her brain-dead.
“We feel devastated,” Leonardo Ayala, Jimenez’s uncle, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Sunday.
“We still can’t believe that this happened,” Ayala said. “We don’t want to accept that [Adriana] is not going to be with us.”
Jimenez had remained on life support since the Aug. 23 shooting after suffering what her family described as a “devastating gunshot wound to the head” in a GoFundMe created to help with expenses.
Police said the gunman approached the Toyota Camry where Jimenez and her sister were sitting in an alley in Los Angeles’ Canoga Park neighborhood and opened fire at about 8 a.m. as they waited for a parking space.
According to her family, the sisters had finished their shifts as cooks at a Thai restaurant around 2 a.m. before spending time with two cousins and Jimenez’s boyfriend, the father of her unborn baby. When they returned to their apartment, Jimenez was driving and pulled into an alley while they waited for another vehicle to move so they could park.
Authorities identified the suspect as 30-year-old Walter Francisco Rodriguez Garcia. Police said he also tried to shoot Jimenez’s boyfriend before he was arrested two days after the attack.
“I still want to know why he did what he did,” Ayala told the Times.
Garcia is facing three counts of attempted murder, with special allegations that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm. Prosecutors have said they expect to upgrade the charges against Garcia now that Jimenez has been taken off life support.
“Her birthday is on Sept. 11,” Ayala told local ABC affiliate KABC. “That day they were going to do the gender reveal for her baby,” he said. “Sadly, her baby also died.”
Describing Jimenez’s 6-year-old daughter, Ayala added, “That’s the hardest part, knowing the little girl calls out for her mom and cries for her.”
Jimenez’s sister survived the shooting after the bullet that struck her throat barely missed her vocal cords and jugular vein, the Times reports.
“The doctor said had it been just a few centimeters back, the bullet would have taken her life,” Ayala told the newspaper.
The motive for the shooting has not been released.
The post Pregnant 22-year-old mom ambushed and shot in the head while sitting in car with sister, taken off life support just weeks before gender reveal: Family first appeared on Law & Crime.
