Letter carrier Sharralle Williams was delivering mail along a new route in South Shore on Thursday when she got an alert from the Citizen app that someone nearby was unconscious and needed help.
She saw a frantic woman across the street. Williams quickly went over to her, and the woman asked if she knew CPR.
Williams, a former child care provider who had been trained in the lifesaving technique for the last decade, went inside the house expecting to find an adult having a heart attack.
Instead, when she entered the home, she saw a boy — later identified as 8-year-old Josiah Hooker — with a gunshot wound to his head. Authorities said he and his brothers had been playing with a loaded gun — allegedly left out by his stepfather — when Josiah was shot.
Williams started chest compressions and instructed his panicked stepfather, Derrick Taylor, to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and to breathe “for the baby.”
