MIAMI – Wiping away tears, Jamita Boatman described how she arrived home late Wednesday afternoon to find out her 15-year-old daughter had been shot.
"I was told that the little boy was in the yard waving a gun into my daughter's face," Boatman told Local 10 News.
Minutes before a boy was seen in handcuffs and walked to a police car, Boatman said, he was playing in their front yard off Northwest 43rd Street and Second Avenue in Miami with her two daughters.
"He's 15. What is a 15-year-old doing with a gun?" Boatman said. "My 12-year-old daughter was out there. Ronniesha is 15 and then their 12-year-old friend was out there with them."
Boatman said she wasn't home at the time, but her grandmother was, and when the grandmother noticed the gun, she told the teen to leave. Boatman said her 12-year-old thought it was a toy, but she said Ronniesha knew better.
"She told him, 'What are you going to do with that, anyway?' She said the guy told her, 'I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with it,'" Boatman said. "When she got up, that's when he shot her in the back."
She said Ronniesha told her it was an accident, but she said that just doesn't sit well with her and that this was just one wrong move away from deadly.
"He should not have had the gun," Boatman said. "He should not have been in those kids' face waving the gun, because it could've hit them in the face or in the head instead of my daughter's back."
The teenager is in stable condition. She will be at Jackson Memorial Hospital overnight for observation.
Police are questioning the teen they believe pulled the trigger.