Two crack cocaine dealers have been arrested over the stray-bullet shooting that wounded an 11-month-old girl in the Bronx last year, the feds said Wednesday — as the child’s mom told The Post she’s “elated” her daughter’s alleged assailants have finally been caught.
Ahmed Altorei, 36, and Samuel Bautista, 30, are accused of opening fire at a rival drug dealer on Jan. 19, 2022 –striking little Catherine Ortiz in the face with a stray bullet as she sat in a parked car with her mom Miraida Gomez.
“I’m elated,” Gomez, 33, said when reached by phone Wednesday, adding that she was on her way to court to see the accused assailant’s in her daughter’s case arraigned.
The mom of three girls said she heaved a “cry of release” when she heard that the two men were captured.
“It’s bittersweet,” she noted. “We still have the rest of our lives to live with what happened.”
The baby survived but had to undergo brain surgery after a bullet hit her in the left cheek. Her mom was with her in the car at the intersection of East 198th Street and Valentine Avenue that evening, and was unharmed.
Cops had released a photo of the car driven by a suspect involved in the shooting days after in an effort to apprehend them. But it took more than a year for authorities to track down the alleged gunman — with Altorei busted on Tuesday while Bautista was nabbed Wednesday morning, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
The two Bronx men are charged with distributing narcotics and carrying firearms as part of a drug trafficking ring in the Grand Concourse and East 198th Street section of the borough.
The duo allegedly sold cocaine and crack cocaine from May 2018 through August 2023, prosecutors allege.
They became involved in a street shooting attempt on a rival drug dealer the day the baby bystander got hit with the stray round, prosecutors said.
“On a day like any other, gunshots rang out in the Bronx,” Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “It was a targeted shooting. But one of the bullets hit an innocent victim – a baby girl, who was just 11 months old – who was shot in the face as she sat in a car with her mother.”
“The baby survived, and that’s a miracle. But the emotional and physical trauma will never go away,” Williams said.
Ortiz underwent three surgeries in the past year, removing part of her brain and to place a titanium plate in her skull, her mom explained.
“The bullet fractured her skull. They had to remove that side of her skull; it wasn’t salvageable,” Gomez said.
Doctors predicted that the little girl, now two-and-a-half-years-old, would never be able to walk or talk, but thankfully those predictions were wrong, Gomez said.
“She’s made great progress thankfully,” Gomez said.
“But because of her medical diagnosis we have a ways to go with strengthening her extremities, but otherwise she’s functioning as that of a normal two-and-a-half-year-old.”
The daughter is speaking now and her first word was “mama,” Gomez said. “Luckily for me.”
“She sings songs, she dances,” the mother said.
Video had captured the disturbing moment when the gunman fired two shots, one of which hit the baby girl.
Gomez said she recalled the day of the shooting and being unable to call 911 after it happened.
“I was sitting right next to my daughter when it happened,” Gomez recalled. “You don’t know what to do. Of course you’re like call 911, but I couldn’t call 911.”
“I was holding her, I was giving her CPR. It was really scary,” the mom said.
Altorei and Bautista were slated to make their first court appearance in the case Wednesday.
They each face a minimum of 10 years behind bars if convicted on the narcotics conspiracy charge and could be sentenced to up to life in prison.
Lawyers for the two defendants didn’t return requests for comment Wednesday.