Police: Bullet that grazed 2-year-old meant for neighbors

Shooting suspect charged with felonious assault.

Police CLEVELAND, OHIO — say the gunman who injured a 2-year-old Cleveland child as she slept in bed with her mother was trying to aim at their neighbors, who owed him $120 for a marijuana debt.

Deshun Lewis, 23, is charged with felonious assault and possessing a gun as a felon in the shooting that happened about 9:30 p.m. Sunday on Guthrie Avenue near West 65th Street and Madison Avenue in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.

His bond was set at $250,000 when he appeared for arraignment Wednesday in Cleveland Municipal Court, court records show.

The 2-year-old girl suffered a graze wound to her buttocks after Lewis fired a bullet into the bedroom where she and her mother were lying in bed, according to a police report and her mother, Ronnetta Malcolm.

Malcolm told cleveland. com on Wednesday that her daughter was released from the hospital the morning after the shooting, but she is still feeling the after effects of her injury.

“She’s still in pain. She doesn’t sit down and she has to sleep on her stomach,” Malcolm said.

Police say that Lewis fired gunshots at Malcolm’s two neighbors after they pulled into the driveway at their Guthrie Avenue home.

One neighbor told police that she saw two men appear once she reached the porch of her house. Her boyfriend said that he recognized one of the men, known as “D”, because he owed him $120 for a previous marijuana purchase, the report says.

The man, later identified by police as Lewis, fired six gunshots at the woman, the report says. She dove back into the car with her boyfriend and they drove away from the gunfire, the report says.

The boyfriend received a text message from “D” as police interviewed him that night. It said “I just spared your girlfriend’s life,” the report says.

Malcolm said she was next to her daughter in bed when the gunfire erupted.

“I didn’t know what was going on. I heard (the bullets) hitting my house, and my daughter was screaming because it came through the wall and hit her,” Malcolm said.

Police searched the city for Lewis’s car and pulled it over near East 64th Street and Quincy Avenue, according to the police report.

Malcolm’s neighbor’s later identified Lewis as the man who shot at them, the report says.

Lewis’ criminal history in Cleveland includes convictions for receiving stolen property, carrying concealed weapons, drug trafficking and drug possession, court records show.

He was sentenced to two years of probation in July 2017 in connection with the drug trafficking case, records show. He was also sentenced to probation in 2015 after prosecutors said he stole earrings from a man at gunpoint on Quincy Avenue, records show.