Girl Scout Shot On the Way to Sell Cookies, Community Rallies to Help

After endlessly reminding her mother that it was nearly time to pick up her Girl Scout cookies to sell them door-to-door, a little girl named Sinai was finally ready. But as she left her apartment’s door in Indianapolis she was hit in the leg with a stray bullet.

The nine-year-old’s mother Shanita Miller didn’t realize what’d happened to her child initially because Sinai ran into the house with her two sisters following the gun shots, according to the Indianapolis Star. Once further inside however Sinai began calling for her mom.

“Mama, mama, mama. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.”

Her mother Shanita Miller asked her what hurt and then she pulled up the girl’s pant leg. Sinai’s limb was covered in blood. Shanita was horrified.

After having her leg treated and wrapped at a hospital, Sinai’s mother is still looking for answers as to why her daughter was shot but police don’t seem to know. Sinai never did pick up those Girl Scout cookies.

Now that she’s on the mend, she won’t be able to sell them door-to-door as she hoped. The Scouts organization itself is now involved, announcing the Sinai is the first Girl Scout to have been shot while “involved in a cookie sales project.”

This incident follows a report the Girls Scout released last year detailing the rising violence in the area, stating that “1 of 7 girls in Indiana experienced violence in their neighborhoods.” In response to Sinai’s injury, the Girl Scout council has launched a website and a hotline at (877) 474-2249 for customers to buy cookies from her and she can meet her sales goal while she’s healing.

Thus far—get ready to cry—over 2,000 boxes have been ordered in Sinai’s name.

Still, Sinai is just trying to be a kid in a very adult situation and wondering if she’ll make Friday’s roller rink field trip. Unfortunately, she can’t.

On her first night after the wound, the girl jumped out of her sleep at noises as common as the sound of her sister getting up to go to the bathroom, proof that some wounds aren’t fixed with a bandage.

“I feel like the situation is that my baby is going to be scarred,” her mother said.