A Milwaukee woman has been sentenced to probation in connection with a shooting that left a 9-year-old girl wounded after she and another adult left four young children unsupervised in an apartment.
Vanta’jah Westmoreland, 24, pleaded guilty to three counts of being party to a crime of child neglect. On Friday, she was sentenced to two years of probation. Westmoreland was identified as the girlfriend of 29-year-old Nakia Piggee, the mother of the girl who was shot.
The incident occurred on November 8, 2024, when the two women left four children, ages 9, 8, 4, and 2, alone in a Milwaukee apartment for roughly 40 minutes while they went grocery shopping. The youngest child, only 2 years old, has disabilities and required a feeding tube and supplemental oxygen.
Police were called to the apartment after Piggee reported that her daughter had been shot. Officers found the 9-year-old girl lying on the living room floor with a gunshot wound to her upper back. She was conscious but struggling to breathe, and an officer applied a chest seal before she was rushed to the hospital. She survived.
During the investigation, the 9-year-old initially pointed to the 4-year-old boy as the shooter, but he later said his 8-year-old sister had been the one holding the gun when it fired. The weapon, a 9mm handgun, was eventually recovered from a neighbor’s apartment after a teenager admitted to removing it from the scene.
Officers described the apartment as filthy, with the children’s bedroom littered with liquor bottles, ashes, and diapers. No trigger lock or secure storage for the firearm was found. Piggee later admitted the gun belonged to Westmoreland and had been kept under a mattress, claiming she “forgot it was there.”
Piggee previously pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of child neglect in April 2025 and also received two years of probation.
The case has drawn attention to gaps in child supervision and firearm storage laws, as authorities continue reviewing safety protocols for vulnerable children left in unsafe environments.
