Zainee Hailey's grandfather said the kind of violence that claimed the 13-year-old girl 'has to stop somewhere'
The grandfather of the 13-year-old Newark girl gunned down while taking out the trash on Christmas night said he hopes the child’s death will serve as a wakeup call about the violence rippling through the community.
“We can’t let this young lady’s death be in vain,” Michael Peterson, 54, said in the living room of his Elizabeth home. “It has to stop somewhere.”
Peterson paused.
“It has to start somewhere.”
Peterson’s granddaughter, Zainee Hailey, was struck by a stray bullet at about 10 p.m. Christmas night outside her family’s home on Schley Street in Newark. Zainee, a seventh-grader at Bragaw Avenue Elementary School, was bringing out the trash with her 7-year-old brother. The younger child was unharmed.
Also killed in the shooting was Kasson Morman, 15, a student at Central High School. Morman’s friend, Abdul “Scooter” Frazier, was seriously injured and remained hospitalized today. Abdul lived on the home’s first floor.
Peterson and his wife, Vivian, gave their granddaughter a Kindle on Christmas Eve. The girl was an avid reader, and her family had big plans for her.
“She was smiling from ear to ear,” Peterson said. “College — that was the goal.”
A typical day for Zainee would involve school, homework and chores, then reading and watching movies in her free time, Peterson said.
On Christmas night, there was no school or homework. But there were the chores, Peterson said.
“That’s why it was so tragic - she was just doing chores,” the grandfather said.
Zainee lived in the Schley street apartment with her mother and father, two sisters and a brother. The youngest sister, Adriana, was born Nov. 27, Peterson said. That in and of itself was a recent source of pride for Zainee.
“Pop pop , I fed the baby,” he recalls her telling him on Christmas Eve.
Today, Peterson said, he remains dumbfounded by the senselessness of his granddaughter’s death.
“We’re talking kids,” he said.
Peterson paused again.
“On Christmas.”
Star-Ledger staff writer Mark Mueller contributed to this report.
