Her Mother Was Killed—and She Was Shot in the Head

Ocean Ancrum-Robertson was 5 months old when she was hit in the head by one of two dozen bullets fired into the car where she was riding with her mother on Dec. 5, 2020.

Her mother, Fa’Quansa Sha’Georgia Ancrum, known as Molly, became one of a record 170 homicides in Louisville, Kentucky, that year. The responding officers were told upon their arrival, “There’s a baby shot!,” and realized Ocean was still alive when they heard her moan. They immediately began CPR and raced her to a hospital in a radio car rather than wait for an ambulance.

Thanks to the quick action of the officers, the determined efforts of the trauma team, and the skill of the pediatric neurosurgeons in a series of brain operations, Ocean survived. She did not become a part of the body counts by which gun violence and homicide rates are charted by city, state, and the whole nation.

Ocean instead became one of the uncounted kids who are left permanently disabled by gunfire. She suffers as many as 10 seizures a day and has reached none of the milestones she should have passed as someone now 19 months old.

“She still can’t walk, she still can’t crawl, she can’t sit herself up, and she can’t hold a bottle,” her maternal grandmother, Sherry Ancrum, told The Daily Beast on Monday.

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Ocean also cannot eat solid food.

“So she’s still on baby formula,” Ancrum said.

Unless you notice that her unfocused eyes can’t track an object, you might think she was just a normal child.

“She look good on the outside, but on the inside, she’s really messed up,” Ancrum said.

That becomes clear when seizures hit. Ancrum holds the child's face and massages her chest.

“I holler, ‘Ocean! Ocean!’” Ancrum said. “And when she comes out of it, she’ll give me a little cry. Then she’ll sleep almost that whole day because when you have a seizure, it tires you out real bad.”

When the seizure just continues, Ancrum has to once again rush Ocean to an emergency room, as she did on Friday. Ancrum has a Feb. 17 appointment with a surgeon who is speaking of removing the damaged part of Ocean’s brain in the hope that it will curtail the seizures. Ancrum will otherwise just continue an exhausting routine that includes an 80-minute drive from her home in Lexington to Ocean’s doctors in Louisville.

“Only thing I can do is keep going back and forth to her doctor’s appointments and going to the emergency room,” Ancrum said.

Ancrum drives with the baby seat facing forward in the back seat so she can steal glances back at Ocean.

“When I see myself in the clear, I have to look back at Ocean,” Ancrum said. “If she goes into a seizure, I have to pull over.”

Back home, Ancrum is often up much of the night, checking on the child.

“Making sure she’s breathing, making sure she’s not having a seizure,” Ancrum said. “I might close my eyes now and then, but then I’m back up.”

Ancrum can sometimes hear Ocean make a sound that seems altogether miraculous given the circumstances.

“You’ll hear her laughing,” Ancrum said. “She’s a really happy baby.”

Ocean can also smile, though Ancrum has difficulty discerning what prompts it.

“You really can’t tell,” Ancrum said.

Ocean’s vision is impaired, and Ancrum is not always sure that the child registers her presence.

“There’s times when you talk to her and she will look at you,” Ancrum said. “Other times, you talk to her, she doesn’t.”

Ancrum is also raising her murdered daughter’s four other children, along with a child she took in at 3 weeks old a dozen years ago. Her granddaughter, Ja’Myla, was in the car at the time of the shooting, but escaped injury along with the man who was driving. Ja’Myla turns 3 on Saturday and seems to be generally doing well, though she and her three brothers have difficulty grasping what bullets have done to their lives.

“They really still don’t understand,” Ancrum said.

A reminder of their loss came a few days ago, when Ocean for the first time began making what were likely just noises, but sounded like “ma-ma-ma.”

“One of the boys said, ‘You can tell she miss mama because she’s calling, “Mama,”’” Ancrum recalled. “We all miss her.”

Ancrum added, “To be honest, I still haven’t had time to grieve my daughter.”

But the grief was unmistakable in her voice as Ancrum recalled that she had been home on her day off from her job in a nursing home’s laundry when she got a call from a cousin saying something had happened to Molly.

“I said, ‘Why you say that?’” Ancrum told The Daily Beast. “She said, ‘I was on the phone with her and the person she was riding with was calling her name and she wasn’t answering.’”

In the midst of that call, another came, this one from Molly’s phone. Ancrum answered and heard the voice of the man who had been driving her.

“He was like, ‘You need to get here!. They just killed Molly! They just killed Molly!’” Ancrum recalled. “I said, ‘What?’”

Ancrum then got a call from Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville.

“Asking, ‘Is this the grandmother of Ocean?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, it is.’ They said, ‘OK. we need some information because she was just brought in with a gunshot wound to the head.’”

Molly had been taken to University of Louisville Hospital, where she had been beyond saving. Ocean was on a ventilator at Norton. Ancrum saw her lying on a ventilator amid a mass of tubes and wires. The child’s head was so swollen the doctors would not be able to determine the bullet’s path for three days. She underwent a series of major surgeries.

Ocean had tested positive for COVID upon her arrival and the two cops who had saved her were quarantined. They afterward became regular visitors.

“One of them is her godfather now,” Ancrum told The Daily Beast.

Ancrum said the man who was driving Molly developed “amnesia” and the case remains officially unsolved.

“It’s an active investigation,” Ancrum said.

On Monday, Ancrum took Ocean to therapy. Ancrum told The Daily Beast that part of it involved Braille and Ocean’s right hand, the right side of her body presently the stronger side.

“They take the right hand and run it across and say the words even though she can’t respond,” Ancrum said. “They teach you so that when you get older you will know.”

Whatever progress she made could not have been enhanced by the five seizures she had during the session. Ancrum figures that Ocean has a long struggle ahead no matter how the next surgery goes. The child will at least have her grandmother beside her.

“When I really get so tired and burned out, there’s nothing I can do but do my best and keep doing what I’m doing,” Ancrum said.

And even as ever more kids are shot every day, Ancrum will once in a while hear that improbable laugh or see that miracle smile that testifies to what survives even when so much has been lost.