DETROIT (WXYZ) — The Detroit Police Department hosted their annual Sergeant Santa event Friday, showering 25 deserving families and a day care with 30 children with gifts for the holidays.
Seventeen-year-old India Williams was one of the recipients.
"I’m happy that they came," she said after receiving her presents Friday evening.
Williams is a determined young woman, but her and her family have gone through a lot in the past 10 years. In 2014, she was shot by a stray bullet in a random act of violence as she was riding her bike.
“She got shot outside on a Sunday playing. It was September 14, 2014, and it was a stray bullet that hit her and put her in this (wheel)chair," her mom Clinqute Burnett-Davis said. “I cry in my room. I don’t let them see me like this. It’s a lot because my daughter was walking one day and now she’s not.”
Williams has been wheelchair bound since the incident. Her family says Detroit police have never stopped checking in on them.
“They have always been in my corner since 2014," Burnett-Davis said.
Just last year, the family was hit with heartbreak again after Burnett-Davis lost her husband Eric Burnett-Davis to an accident. The presents they received Friday are a reminder that they are never alone.
“They bless a bunch of families and I’m so thankful that they do this," Burnett-Davis said.
Williams is now a senior at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School with dreams of becoming a surgeon when she's older. She's also now an explorer with the Detroit Police Law Enforcement Explorers program.
However, her family wasn't the only one blessed with gifts Friday. Detroit police officers made multiple stops to help families with the $20,000 they raised through community partnerships.
"Makes you feel better as an officer when you actually see someone really happy or you know you’re doing something to help someone," neighborhood Police Officer Dan Robinson Sr. said.
