CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Marshawanette Daniels gave a tearful account Thursday of how she discovered her 9-year-old daughter had been struck in the head by a bullet during a neighborhood shootout.
"I held my baby in my arms and she was already dead," Daniels said through sobs in a telephone interview with cleveland.com. "I'm a nurse and I couldn't do anything for her."
Daniels had stopped to pick up her son Wednesday evening at the boxing gym where he trained at, like she has for the last five years. Her daughter, Saniyah Nicholson, waited in the car.
Moments later, a shootout erupted outside the gym. By the time Daniels got outside, a stray bullet had ripped through the windshield of her car and hit Saniyah in the forehead, killing her instantly.
Saniyah's 20-year-old sister was also inside the car, but was not injured.
The shootout broke out about 7:30 p.m. n Lee Road near Cloverside Avenue, near the DNA Level Boxing club. Police said a group fired the first shots from a car at two other men or boys standing on the corner. The duo returned fire, police said.
About 15 gunshots were fired, witnesses said. Cleveland police have not said if any arrests have been made.
"It's going to be okay eventually," Daniels said. "But right now I just want my baby back. I want her. She was everything."
Daniels and Saniyah's father, Robert Nicholson, who also was reached by telephone, described their daughter as a beautiful, smart and caring.
She got excellent grades while attending John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Maple Heights, where counselors gathered on Thursday for any classmates who needed comforting.
Daniels said Saniyah liked to color and loved reading, math and writing stories. She also was a talented dancer.
Nicholson, a truck driver for MBI Products in Cleveland, said his daughter also loved jumping on the trampoline when she visited him.
He said he was crushed when Daniels called after the shooting and shouted that her "baby" had been killed.
"I had to lay down for a second," Nicholson said. "Then I got in my car and I blew all the red lights until I got there."
Nicholson had belatedly celebrated Father's Day on Tuesday with a father-daughter dinner at Carrabba's Italian Grill in Brooklyn. They shared a booth and chatted over pasta and shrimp for Saniyah and pasta and chicken for dad.
She gave her dad a Father's Day gift, a dog-tag style necklace with her photo on the tag.
"I told her I'd hang it on my windshield when I'm driving my truck so I could see her every day," Nicholson said.
Nicholson said he and his daughter talked on the phone whenever they weren't together, including about a half hour before she was killed. She was always interested in what he was up to.
"I told her I was just getting ready to eat and go to bed because I have to wake up early for work," Nicholson said. "She told me to do what I needed to do and call her when I had a chance tomorrow. I didn't realize that was the last time I was going to hear by baby say 'I love you.'"
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