Little girl who lost eye in Athens shooting working to find solace

ATLANTA - A little girl is struggling to recover after a stray bullet struck her eye, blinding her. It happened in April at a dance studio on North Avenue in Athens. The man convicted of pulling the trigger will spend decades behind bars. The shot he fired changed little Ne’vaeh Brown’s life forever.

The last several months have been challenging. "Some days she’s happy. Some days she’s sad," said Ne’vaeh’s mom Brittanie Wright. "She’s scared to go to bathroom at night. She’s scared to do any extracurricular activities. We hear loud noises, we jump."

Last April, Ne’vaeh was inside a dance studio in Athens when a stray bullet shattered the glass and grazed Ne’vaeh’s left eye. "My first instinct was getting her to the hospital," Wright said. 

Ne’vaeh, lost that eye, her sight, and her mom says, her childhood. "She only had 4 years of her childhood to be able to see," Wright said. "She’s never going to be able to see out on her left side."

Rasheed Scott admitted to pulling the trigger in the parking lot during an argument with another man. Another bullet hit a 14-year-old girl in the arm. Scott last week was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to firing those shots.

"I have to explain to her that he’s not coming back. He’s not going to be on the streets anymore. You don’t have to worry about him," Wright said.

Ne’vaeh now wears a prosthetic eye. She suffers with PTSD along with the physical and emotional scars from the day her mom feared her little daughter could have lost her life. "She’s not going to be able to live her childhood as a normal child anymore. Physical therapy and counseling, a lot of stuff she’s going to have to go through. Her childhood is off now," Wright said.

Ne’vaeh will spend the rest of her life with that prosthetic eye.

Her family set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for medical expenses.