A Gary man admitted to shooting and paralyzing a 13-year-old girl walking home after she had rebuffed his advances that day.
Shamar Walker, now 22, made a brief court appearance Wednesday.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated battery, a Level 3 felony. If a judge accepts, the deal calls for five years in prison with another five on probation.
His sentencing is Jan. 24 before Judge Samuel Cappas.
The girl, paralyzed from the chest down, will “never walk again,” doctors said in charging documents.
Police were called around midnight Jan. 25, 2020 to the intersection of East 21st Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive. A witness flagged officers down to a girl on her back.
It “felt like hours” before someone helped her, she told police.
Earlier that evening, she was at Walker’s sister’s apartment, where he asked her for sex. He and the girl had a past sexual relationship, telling him she was 15, charges state.
They got into an argument, she grabbed her purse and started walking home, court documents state. Walker followed behind her, asking “why she was doing this to him,” documents state.
She called him a “little boy” telling him to go away, before hearing a gunshot and falling to the ground, hitting her head, charges state.
University of Chicago doctors told her mother the bullet severed the girl’s spine, lodging in her T-2 vertebrae, charges state. No surgery would be done. The girl would never walk again and needs assisted living, charging documents say doctors told her.
