Shot in the head, girl must now learn how to learn again

Robbie Jones, 16, of Sylmar, spends a lot of time by herself at home trying to recall past memories that she's lost as she recovers from a gunshot wound to her head. A stray bullet fired by unknown assailants hit her in June as she was at a friend's house about to go pet pitbull puppies. (John Lazar/L.A. Daily News Staff Photographer)

A former Daily News colleague, Alejandro Guzman, tipped us off this summer to a shooting that occurred on his Pacoima street that left two wounded, including a 16-year-old girl. My night counterpart, Rick Coca, chased the details down and got a short story that mentioned a teenage girl getting shot in the head and a man getting injured when a group of men approached a home on foot and opened fire. Rick wrote that witnesses reported that two or three men walked up to the house in the 11200 block of Sproule Avenue at about 10:40 p.m. Sunday and fired several rounds. Robert Scarbrough, 38, was shot multiple times in the torso and the unidentified 16-year-old girl was struck in the head, said Los Angeles Police Department Detective Jose Martinez. "He is expected to survive,'' the officer told Rick."Her injuries were more severe."

Police went on to say they had no arrests but were looking into reported "illegal activity" in the area.

Well, months went by and nothing new developed on the case and as we do in this business all too often, we were on to other news.

Then the mother of the girl called and she was transfered over to me. She said that her daughter had survived, that doctors at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills were calling her the "Miracle Baby" of Holy Cross and that we should do a story.

Photographer John Lazar and I spent time with her and her family as she is going through grueling speech and occupational therapy and documented it for a story that ran today here.