INDIANAPOLIS — "I've done a lot of crying," said 28-year-old Destiney Gillespie, sitting on her couch in her northeast Indianapolis apartment.
Crying was not the way Gillespie thought she'd be bringing in a new year, terrified for the safety of her 11-year-old son.
"I can take something happening to me. I can't take something happening to my baby. That's my only child," said Gillespie.
The reason the middle school English teacher is so terrified is because of what she found when she came home early New Year's Day morning at Castleton Lake Apartments.
"We came over, we seen the bullet hole through the window," Gillespie said, showing a hole through the glass of her back window which overlooks a retention pond at the complex.
She made the discovery just hours after IMPD found a man shot to death between two buildings at the same complex.
"The young man killed across the lake, that happened way before, like in the afternoon," Gillespie explained.
Her back window wasn't the only part of her home damaged.
She pointed to another hole in her kitchen wall, just above her sink, then one in her bathroom on the other side of the wall from the kitchen.
"Then it went through right here," she said, pointing to the back wall of her bathroom.
On the other side of that wall is the bedroom where Gillespie's son sleeps. That's where police found a bullet next to the 11-year-old's bed.
"I was told by police if my son had been here, it could have went a different way," Gillespie said, explaining that she and her son just moved to the apartment complex in late October.
After this, Gillespie is ready to pack up again.
"We got to find somewhere to go. We can't stay here," she said.
Money's tight though and Gillespie already works two jobs to make ends meet. In the meantime, her son is staying with his dad.
Gillespie doesn't feel safe letting him come home.
"What do you say to an 11-year-old when you're telling him you can't see mommy for a while because I got to figure out where we're going to live," she said.
It's a lot to handle for this single mom, but she's doing it because staying put and dealing with "what ifs" is not an option.