Family of Merced child injured by stray bullet speaks out

Ten-year-old Leo Serna was watching a black-snake firecracker expand on the ground with his family on the Fourth of July when he was shot in the leg.

The bullet passed through the sixth-grader’s left leg, just below his knee, and lodged in his right forearm.

“It hurt a lot. I fell down. I didn’t know what it was,” Leo said in an interview Friday from his Merced home.

Merced police believe the child was struck by a stray bullet fired in the air by someone celebrating Independence Day. It’s possible the bullet hit the ground and ricocheted into Leo.

“It’s scary because it hit him with enough force that it could’ve killed him,” Lt. Matt Williams said. “It’s a common problem on the Fourth and New Year’s for people to shoot guns in the air and it’s extremely dangerous. They (bullets) have to come down somewhere.”

Leo’s family knows he’s lucky to be alive.

“It’s somebody that made a dumb choice. I’m sure they didn’t think they’d hurt a family,” said Leo’s mother, Maria. “My daughter was right there, too. It could’ve hit anybody.”

Leo’s father, Jesse, said he hopes people will learn from the incident and be more careful with firearms.

“It’s a parent’s worst fear, have your child get hurt like that,” he said. “It’s maybe one thing if someone is involved in the streets or doing things they shouldn’t, but he’s just a child. This was just out of nowhere.”

The family didn’t immediately know what had happened when Leo was shot. The noise of firecrackers and fireworks prevented them from hearing anything out of the ordinary. At first, his parents said, they thought he might have been burned by a firework.

“But it just didn’t look right, the way it was bleeding. But we don’t have any experience with these things, we didn’t know what was wrong, so we got ready and took him to the hospital,” Jesse Serna said.

Doctors examined the injury and the family learned their son had been shot.

The family was celebrating with relatives on Cortona Court, near Golden Valley High School.

“Someone over there probably just doesn’t know what they did,” Maria Serna said.

She’s struggled emotionally this week, balancing gratitude over the fact that the incident wasn’t worse and anger that it happened at all.

“My son is very strong. He’s very brave. He’s a hero,” she said. “He could’ve been dead and this person just has no respect for guns; no respect for human life.”

Jesse and Maria Serna said the incident should serve as a reminder of the importance of responsible gun ownership.

“My children want everyone to know that you can learn how to respect guns, you can learn how to handle them well,” Maria Serna said. “This shouldn’t happen.”

Leo’s arm is in a cast and he’ll walk with a crutch for a while. He’s been taken out of summer school – which he admitted he’d didn’t mind as much – but he expects to be ready for school to begin this fall.

“I can’t ride my bike. I sit inside a lot, all the time,” he said. “I play with Legos. It’s pretty much kind of boring.”

Jesse Serna said he’s just glad his son is still around to get bored.

“It’s just really irresponsible for this to have happened,” he said. “This is no joke at all. When you fire in the air, obviously it’s going to come back down somewhere. There can be huge consequences.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 8:12 PM with the headline "Family of Merced child injured by stray bullet speaks out."