OLATHE, Kan. — On Monday Melissa Ortiz told a Johnson County jury her sleeping little boy suddenly awoke, started screaming and jumped out of bed after getting shot in his shoulder on the night of September 30, 2013.
“Somebody shot my son! Please, help me,” those chilling words are just part of the 911 call a crying Ortiz made on the night her then eight-year-old son, Micah Kimble, got shot.
“Micah breathe. It’s okay, just breathe, calm down, ” Ortiz went on to tell her bleeding son as the pair waited for paramedics to arrive to their Kessler Street home.
Ortiz says the bullet, which is still lodged in the fourth grader’s chest, narrowly missed Micah’s heart.
Prosecutors maintain that Phillip Bennett, the man Ortiz dated for eight months at the time, drove by and shot up the family’s house after learning Ortiz was seeing another man.
Bennett, who’s charged with aggravated battery, has been in jail ever since the shooting.
Defense attorneys say they will prove that Bennett had nothing to do with the shooting and was at a cousin’s house in Lenexa when the boy got shot.
“About 20 minutes after the shooting, the Overland Park Police Department decided Phillip Bennett was their man. A rush to judgement, ” defense attorney Kellie Goodman told the jury.
Micah is now nine years old and expected to take the witness stand Tuesday. His two sisters, also in the home at the time, weren’t hurt in the drive-by shooting.
