Girl, 10, Fighting for Her Life After She Was Shot in Van’s Backseat During Road Rage Incident on Her Way to School By Desiree Anello

A 10-year-old girl is fighting for her life after getting shot during a road rage incident while on her way to school in Texas. 

The child, Alisa Gates, was transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after she was shot through the side of her family’s car in San Antonio on Friday, Jan. 30, according to the San Antonio Police Department. 

The suspect, Bryan Arceo, allegedly backed out of a driveway aggressively when another driver honked at him, police said. In response, the suspect fired his gun toward the victim’s vehicle and hit the girl in the backseat before driving off. The two other adults inside the vehicle remained unharmed. 

After the incident, Jason Gates told local outlet KSAT that he and his wife began to smell gunpowder before looking toward the backseat where the bullet pierced the back door of their van. 

“My wife looks at my daughter and says, ‘Hey, did you get shot?’ ” he recalled to the outlet. “My daughter says, ‘No.’ Then, I opened the door a little bit.”

That’s when Jason realized that Alisa had been wounded by the bullet. 

“I kept telling my wife, ‘Babe, you need to pull over.’ So, she pulled in right here, and this is where we stopped,” he continued, noting that they initially tried to drive her to the hospital before pulling into a parking lot to call for help. “My wife was on her horn, but she was on her horn no more than three seconds.”

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As the frightened parents attempted to get their daughter to the hospital, Jason told the outlet that they briefly spotted the same car that had open fired at their vehicle moments before. So, they immediately recorded the license plate and got a description of the driver. 

After a multi-unit response was activated to locate and arrest the suspect, police said that Arceo was taken into custody at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center and has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault and one count of endangering a child. 

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According to an affidavit obtained by KSAT, Arceo was allegedly joined in the vehicle by his ex-wife, who was later dropped off at her workplace, and a child, who was dropped off at a nearby school shortly after the shooting.

“She (Arceo’s ex-wife) looked away and heard a pop,” the affidavit stated, noting that she also saw him point the gun at the family’s van before firing. 

While Jason has since shared that, upon undergoing surgery, Alisa has been “doing great” in her recovery, he couldn’t say the same for their car or the memories it carries from the horrifying incident. 

“I told my wife, I said, ‘What are we going to do with a bullet hole in the side of the car?’ ” he told KSAT. “She goes, ‘I don’t want the car anymore.’ ”