ATLANTA — The mother of a 7-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet fired outside Phipps Plaza and died days later in December 2020 tearfully recalled the moment she realized her daughter had been shot on Friday.
The testimony from Mariah Maxie, the mother of Kennedy Maxie, came as the trial began against the man accused of firing off that shot, Daquan Reed.
The mom described the slow realization her daughter had been gravely injured after she and her sister, who was driving a car past Phipps, heard a loud bang.
"It got our attention enough to where I started to call Kennedy's name to try to get her attention," she said. "I looked in the back seat and saw that she was hunched over and I continued to try to get her attention... I didn't think we were in any danger."
Mariah Maxie said her daughter was "incredibly animated" and so "at first I thought she was like, playing with us."
"At some point I saw white foam coming out of her mouth and so I immediately started thinking seizure, and I jumped in the back seat," she said. "She was unresponsive, she was like hunched over - I was trying to get her to sit up and I was calling her name... then I noticed that she was bleeding."
Mariah Maxie's testimony came amid several other accounts from witnesses on Day 1 of the trial, including her sister Jade, who was driving the car, an Atlanta Police officer and several employees at Phipps Plaza the day of the shooting.
The trial will resume on Monday.
In her testimony, the mother described the moments from discovering the blood on her daughter to the rush to get her to a hospital.
"When I got in the back I was trying to sit her up, so blood was getting on my hands, I started to try to find where she was hurt from," the mom said. "At one point of trying to get her to sit up and respond to me, I touched the back right side behind her ear and she winced in pain."
Mariah Maxie said she then called her mom or boyfriend at the time - she couldn't recall who first, exactly - because "I just didn't know what to do."
"Did you understand what had happened?" she was asked on the witness stand.
"I knew that she had been shot," she replied.
The mother said her sister then drove the three of them up GA-400 to Children's Scottish Rite Hospital.
"Jade immediately jumped out of the car and she like opened the back door, making a bunch of fuss, ran into the hospital and she came out and grabbed Kennedy, and some doctors and nurses came out to carry Kennedy inside," Mariah Maxie said.
Kennedy would go into surgery to remove part of her skull and relieve pressure on her brain swelling.
On Christmas Day, the mother said, doctors performed the first part of a test for brain death in Kennedy.
"And after, on December 26, what happened after the test?" attorneys for the prosecution asked Mariah.
"She was declared brain dead," she said. "And then that was kind of the final, like, that was just final."