Inset: Adriana Jimenez (GoFundMe). Background: The Canoga Park area of Los Angeles, Calif., where Adriana Jimenez was shot in the head while seated in a car with her sister (KABC/YouTube).
A 22-year-old California mother who was 16 weeks pregnant and raising a 6-year-old daughter has died after she was shot in the head while sitting in a car with her sister, who was also struck by gunfire in 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 sustaining what her family described as a “devastating gunshot wound to the head” in a GoFundMe campaign created to help with expenses.
The gunman who fatally shot Jimenez walked up to the Toyota Camry she was in with her sister and opened fire on them while they were sitting in an alley waiting to park around 8 a.m., police say.
The sisters had finished working as cooks at a Thai restaurant around 2 a.m. and later went out with two cousins and Jimenez’s boyfriend, who was the father of her unborn child. Jimenez was behind the wheel when they returned to their apartment and pulled into an alley to wait for a car to be moved to park, her family says.
The suspect, identified as 30-year-old Walter Francisco Rodriguez Garcia, also attempted to shoot Jimenez’s boyfriend, according to police. He was arrested two days later.
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“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.