When she heard the pop of gunfire, LaPorsha Washington threw her body over her eldest daughter in the front seat, shielding her during a Sunday morning coffee run with her children.
“Get down,” she screamed to the three other daughters she couldn’t protect in the back seat. Gunfire from a pickup nearby shattered her driver’s side window.
When the shooting stopped, her 7-year-old daughter in the back seat was dead. She had been shot in the head in the incident that happened in the Houston area, Washington said, CNN affiliate KTRK reported.
Jazmine Barnes was killed when a man in a red or maroon pickup truck pulled up next to Washington and opened fire in the unprovoked shooting, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
The killing has shattered a Texas family, traumatizing one sister who witnessed it and sparked a search for the suspect.
Washington, 30, sobbed while recounting the terrifying moments to reporters from a hospital bed where she was recovering from a gunshot wound.
“Every time I wake up, I want it to be a dream,” Washington, 30, told CNN on Tuesday. “I want to wake up and see my 7-year-old run through the door and give me a hug and a kiss.”
Washington was released from Ben Taub Hospital in Houston later in the day, the Rev. E.A. Deckard, a family spokesman, said.
Authorities are still investigating a motive for the shooting, which happened in northeastern Harris County close to 7 a.m. Sunday. Washington and her daughters are black. The suspect is described as a bearded white male, possibly in his 40s.
“It’s our belief that it was totally unprovoked, whatever it was, and we’re leaving no stone unturned. We’re going to leave every motive out there as a possibility,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters.