Our Family's Relocation

Living in Milwaukee it can be difficult to walk into any Gas Station, Department store or heck, even stopping at a red light without hearing a lengthy story about an unfortunate string of events that tears at your heartstrings and results in an attempt to get you to pull out your wallet or even the change in your pocket or purse. After living here for so long you tend to become numb to these stories and move on with your day. For that reason I have hesitated for sometime in moving forward with this post however after have time to form a true understanding of what is ahead of us, myself and my family, I just won't be able to do it alone.

In the evening of Easter Sunday after Chruch, lunch with the family and Easter Baskets we drove to Waukesha to look at, test drive and finally purchase an 03 Volkswagen Jetta from a private seller for $1400.00. After this long but enjoyable Easter my daughter, her father, Eric and I returned home. Eric decided to go to the gas station around 9:30PM. He parked his car in our driveway behind the house when he returned and as he started walking towards the house 3 men in ski masks started running towards him, putting a gun in his face demanding everything he had. He told them he didn't have anything and that he had to get inside to his daughter. As he tried to turn around to come into the house, one of the men pistol whipped him in the back of his head. He started to run along the side of our house toward the front door and the man with the gun shot four rounds, hitting him twice. Once lodging a bullet in his hip, fracturing his right femur and a second entering the top of his right shoulder and existing in the front fracturing his clavicle. 

I drove the car we purchased earlier that day to the hospital as soon as I was released  by the police and able to make arrangements for my 4 year old daughter - who was sitting on my lap after taking a bath still wrapped up in her towel when the bullets flew no more than 10 feet away from us, as we dove to the floor to hide from the shots that at the time were unknowingly to us penetrating her fathers body. After we transferred from Freodtert Hospital to the Milwaukee VA Hospital, as both Eric and Myself are Veterans of the US Army, where we met. (We were stationed at Ft. Riley, in Kansas, our Daughters name is Rylie.)  We deployed together as well, spent a year in Iraq, him a Mechanic and myself a Medic. - As I was heading to the VA, about halfway there the Jetta stopped running. Completely died. Typically my first call would be to the wonderful man in my life but he was laying in a hospital bed. Ended up having to tow the car to the house.

We do not feel safe returning to this house as these men have not yet been caught. So the situation I find myself in is very hard and I need as much help as I can get. I need to find a place for my family, a car to get to work and I don't have the finances to do so. We are struggling and with Eric being out of work for the next 6 weeks I don't even know where to begin. I am asking for your help. 

Eric will be released from the hospital in a few days and I would like to have a plan, some start to a short / long term solution to this tragic incident that happened to my family. 

To top it all off 2 weeks before this incident we bought a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire, and the motor blew in that car on Thursday, April 13th  causing us to purchase the Jetta, so the little money we had saved, was used to ensure we could get to work. 

I feel eel like everything that could have gone wrong has in the past week and a half but I will continue to stay positive as I have my family looking to me for strength and love.

I can't believe how long I have been writing but just have a lot on my mind. Please, if you can, we need as much help as we can get. Thank you and God Bless.