Girl tells boy ‘My daddy shoot me’

As Philry Peters headed to school on Wednesday morning never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined what lay in store for him.

Young Peters would stumble upon a scene that no one would like for a child, or an adult for that matter, to come across – a father committing a most heinous act on the children he was known to love.{{more}}

Sitting in his living room with his mother Patricia at his side, Philry related to Searchlight what he saw at Big Sand Beach in an incident that must have lasted less than 30 seconds.

“I was walking over to school when I heard a shot,” Philry recounted. “When I look around I saw a little girl drop.”

The grade six student looked around just in time to see six-year-old Rosanna Shallow fall dead from a bullet to her head.

He witnessed a brief struggle between Rosanna’s sister Kimberly and dad Tom Dick, which led to Kimberly being pushed to the ground then shot, following which, the man turned the gun on himself.

“When she (Kimberly) fall, her daddy shoot her and then he shoot himself, I saw him go up in the air then drop.”

Philry recounted seeing Kimberly getting up and running in his direction, where some other children had gathered. She was bleeding from her head.

“She say ‘My daddy shoot me! My daddy shoot me’. So we go to her and hold on to her and bring her up the road.”

From there, young Kimberly was taken to the area clinic, then rushed to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital where she was listed in stable condition at press time.

Philry recollected that during the ordeal Tom Dick said nothing, as if oblivious to what was going on around him.

Philry is being hailed as a hero by villagers, being the first on the scene to offer assistance to his injured schoolmate.

He is regarded in the community as a bold child who is always willing to help.

The 12-year-old, who has six sisters of his own, also suffers from sickle cell anemia, and until that day, did not know the name of the person whose life he possibly saved, although he may have seen her in the school yard thousands of times.