From MSNBC.com years ago, amid the shock of the ongoing Los Angeles riots, there was a story that really grabbed headlines: The youngest victim of the violence had been shot while still in her mother’s womb.
On April 30, 1992, Elvira Evers, then 7 ½-months pregnant, watched her Compton block fill with vehicles laden with stolen loot. The nearby swap meet had turned into a free-for-all.
WATCH BELOW ELVIRA AND JESSICA EVERS 20 YEARS LATER
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“I started getting nervous,” Elvira Evers said.
As she waited for her eldest son to come home that night, she pushed her 5-year-old daughter Nela into her home.
A minute later, she felt like her body was aflame. She’d been shot in the belly.
Amid the chaos occuring all over the South Los Angeles region, it would have taken 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, so a friend drove Evers to St. Francis Medical Center. She had an emergency caesarian section and didn’t wake up for a week.
When she finally opened her eyes, still in the hospital, she instantly began to cry.
“And I was just like, oh my God, my baby,” Evers said.
A nurse came to her side, asking, “Why are you crying?”
Evers thought she’d lost her baby. But she hadn’t, and the nurse took mother to child.
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