BOSTON — Aleyah Fernandez was just walking with her boyfriend in Roxbury a couple of months ago, when she was shot in the spine.
The suspect fired twenty shots into a restaurant, and she was caught in the gunfire.
“I got hit in my spine and I just remember falling to the ground and everything was dark,” said Fernandez. “I just felt numbness and like I was floating and couldn’t feel anything.”
She says a year before this shooting, she was homeless and had just gotten her life back together.
“I finally got like my first apartment, my first room, and I finally got myself a good-paying job and was being consistent with it, just being independent like I wanted to be,” said Fernandez.
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Now, Aleyah is learning how to be physically independent again at Spaulding Rehab.
“We’re working on her using both of her hands to do some functional tasks,” said Rosalie Shnorhokian, Aleyah’s occupational therapist.
Aleyah’s doctors say she has limited mobility from the chest down, but they’re seeing good improvements in her arms and hands.
“That’s really focusing on working on motor control for the arm, so being able to bring her arm up and stabilize it while also doing something functional like pouring water, which will relate to anything like when she’s eating food, meal prepping,” said Shnorhokian.
“A lot of people go through stuff like this, and they don’t make it, so for me to be here, I feel like that’s my purpose,” said Fernandez.
Aleyah says she’s grateful to be alive, and while she tries to stay positive, she hopes by sharing her story, people will learn gun violence is never the answer.
“Learn how to deal with what you’re going through in a better way instead of going straight to violence and going straight to that negativity,” said Fernandez. “Love one another, stop being so violent.”
Aleyah’s doctors hope she’ll be independent enough to go home by the end of the year, but she now has to find new housing.
24-year-old Shawn Walker was arrested for the shooting.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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