Mother says 3-year-old injured in southwest Illinois mass shooting ‘damaged for life’
As soon as she heard the nearby gunshots, Marquisha Collins quickly pulled her car out of the store parking lot in East St. Louis, knowing she had to move fast to protect her little children in the back seat.
“When I looked back, my 8-year-old was on the floor balled up trying to protect himself,’’ she said. “And,I asked him, was he OK and asked was his brother OK? He started screaming ‘I love you Mason. I love you Mason’ That’s when I new my baby was shot.”
Three-year-old Mason Mitchell had been caught in the crossfire in a shooting that left Mason and six adults injured on Sept. 9. Three men have been charged.
The shootings happened around 4 p.m. near Martin Luther King Drive and Sixth Street, outside the East Side Meat Market. Mason was critically injured.
Collins had worked her night job and was running errands the day of the shooting. By late afternoon, she was too tired to go home and cook, so she decided to stop at the store to pick up hot food for her family. She waited in her car with her two young boys while her brother was inside picking up the food.
Outside near her car, people started firing shots at each other. As the the shots rang out, Collins frantically drove away toward the police station while trying to call 911 to get help for her badly wounded child. She couldn’t reach the dispatchers, later figuring that they were handling calls on the multiple shooting.
She continued on to the police station, which luckily was just minutes away.
“I grabbed my baby out of the back seat and ran into the police station. One of the police officers grabbed my baby once I got inside the police station and (I) told them my baby had been shot. One of the officers grabbed my baby and rushed him to the hospital in his police car,” Collins said, loudly sobbing as she recalled the evening of terror.
State police said their officers performed life-saving measures on Mason as they drove him to the hospital.
Mason faces eight hours of surgery
The little boy had been struck in the right arm, and a bullet passed through his back, down his side and into his stomach. His spine was fractured, his mother said.
Mason was in surgery for about eight hours that night after the shooting. Much of the time since then he had been heavily sedated.
Collins said he is being well cared for by the doctors and is responding well to treatment.
On Wednesday, she told the BND she had a positive report about Mason’s progress.
“Mason is doing GREAT,” she said in a text. “He got his back brace so he can sit up. He just got off the breathing tube. He’s doing great. Next we got some rehab...I’m soooo relieved.”
Collins continued: “We have rehab after this so we’ll be working on walking and moving.”
Earlier in the week, Collins said in an interview she is not prepared for the medical treatment costs and other expenses her family faces as a result of the shooting. She hopes that the community will come together and help her with whatever they can.
“My baby is fighting for his life, and he is still facing the possibility of different surgeries after he fought for his life. He is still fighting. Also, there are so many types of risks with every surgery, “ she said.
Collins is praying that Mason will be able to walk again. ” My baby should be at home right now playing. He loves to play and playing with cars is his favorite thing to do,” she said.
She said both Mason and her 8-year-old boy “are damaged for life. He was the first one to see his brother with blood all over him,” Collins said.
Collins wants justice for her son
The six adults who were shot were also taken to local hospitals. Their conditions have not been released, although at least one person was said to be suffering from non-life threatening wounds.
Authorities have not released information on a possible motive.
At a press conference Sept. 10, a day after the shootings, East St. Louis Police Chief Kendall Perry said he didn’t want to speculate about a motive.
“They were not shooting randomly, they had a target,” he said. “I don’t know what their motive was.”
After the shootings, people said they saw three men with weapons fleeing the scene. Within minutes, East St. Louis police, state police and other agencies set up a perimeter and blocked off local streets. A massive search began from the ground and in the air, including drones and a helicopter.
The three suspects were captured at 2:30 a.m. Friday in the basement of a partially demolished building along St. Louis Avenue in East St. Louis, state police said. The building was in woods not far from where the shooting occurred.
Lorenzo W. Bruce Jr., 32, of Madison; Cartez R. Beard, 30, of Cahokia Heights; and Deangelo M. Higgs, 35, of East St. Louis, were each charged with seven counts of aggravated battery/discharge of a firearm and one count of felon in possession of a weapon, according to state police.
Collins said she doesn’t know the shooters. Her boys don’t know them either.
She wants the public to know how much trauma gun violence causes survivors, like the seven people who were shot last week and their family members. And, she wants perpetrators to know that children are innocent, and shooting guns is no way to fix or end a problem with other adults.
“I was hoping they would get caught,” she said of the arrests. “They deserve it. They knew kids were out there.”
Collins wants justice for her children, if there can be justice for the devastation the shooters caused.
“It’s time to put the guns down. Two, 3-year-olds were shot within two or three days . One of them was my baby. I can’t imagine what the family of the other 3-year-old is going through.”
Two days before Mason and the six adults were hit by gunfire, 3-year-old Calyia Stringer died after being struck by a stray bullet while she was watching television in her grandmother’s apartment at Roosevelt Homes in East St. Louis. The bullet had passed through a wall of the apartment during an exchange of gunfire outside the building, according to police. No arrests have been made in that case.
Meanwhile, Collins, her children and other family members are left with the trauma, lifelong injuries and financial debt from the shooting outside East Side Meat Market.
“I want justice for my baby. He fought and is still fighting. It cost him a lot of different risks. I gotta live with this. My baby gotta live with this. He may not be able to be normal. He should not be going through what he is right now,” she said.
This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
