CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An 8-year-old cleaning out a study-space for the upcoming school year stumbled upon the dead body of a man shot in the chest.

Some 12 hours later, a 4-year-old boy riding in the backseat of his mother's SUV was shot in the head during an apparent road-rage incident as she drove on Interstate 90. His 7-year-old sister was also inside the car and was cut from the shattering glass.

No arrest has been made in either shooting.

As Cleveland police detectives investigate both shootings, family members are left to wonder how their introduction to violence at such a young age will come to affect them.

"This is going to jade him; he doesn't know how much it will affect him but it will," said Dejenaba Lockett, the mother of the 8-year-old boy. "That image will haunt him someday."

The effects of violence on children can have wide-ranging consequences. Rosemary Creeden is the associate director for trauma services at Frontline Service, a Cleveland agency that works with survivors of violence. She said children often regress developmentally after a traumatic event.

Children between 5 and 10 years old often struggle in school, experience difficulty with friends and have frequent nightmares.

"Some really withdraw and are really really quiet and numb," Creeden said. "Other kids at this age, the separation is so great they don't want to go to school.

Lockett said her son, an honor roll student, was setting up his study space for his upcoming school year at Cleveland's Campus International School.

He stepped outside their home in the 18300 block of Reese Road to take out the garbage when he saw a man lying near the steps of his home with a gunshot wound to the chest. Lockett saw blood on her car and called 911. She went outside and prayed while standing over 20-year-old Robert Thornton's body.

She said that she was upset throughout the day and that her son ended up comforting her.

"He was completely stoic," Lockett said. "He was forced into manhood to protect his mother. I fear for him every single day. My kids don't have the luxury of the childhood that I have because of this."

Lockett, a single mother who works for the Cuyahoga County Job and Family Services, said she's taken painstaking steps to ensure her son and three other young children-- between the ages of 9 and 4-- stay focused on academics so they don't stray into the street violence that often surrounds them.

They're all enrolled in summer programs, tutoring sessions and study everyday with their grandmother during the summer, Lockett said.

"I try to keep my kids from all the violence," Lockett said. "Yesterday was a cold slap in the face that I can't protect them. I do everything I can, but it's not enough."

About 12 hours later the 4-year-old boy was shot. His mother told police that she honked her horn at a car blocking Division Avenue, a narrow street with cars parked on both sides that runs through a busy public housing complex. Several people were standing just outside the car, which refused to move, police reports say.

She waited for more than five minutes for the man to move his white four-door Pontiac. She finally maneuvered around the man's car. The man followed her onto Interstate 90 eastbound, according to police reports.

The driver pulled up next to her SUV near the East 55th exit ramp. Someone in the car fired eight gunshots, four of which hit the woman's SUV. The bullets shattered the windshield and the side windows, police reports say.

Bullet fragments lodged in the 4-year-old boy's head, but didn't penetrate into his brain, according to police.

The shooters kept driving east on the highway while the woman got off the East 55th exit. She stopped when she saw a police officer out with a tow truck on the side of the road, police reports say.

The boy was taken to University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, where he had surgery. He is in serious condition, police said.

The woman told police she did not know the men in the car and was unsure why they followed her. Police searched the area of West 130th Street and Bellaire Road found a white Pontiac, but noted they were unsure if the car was involved in the shooting, according to police reports.

For children as young as the 4-year-old boy, Creeden said children are typically unable to sleep or eat and have crippling separation anxiety.

"They also lose some acquired skills, such as potty-training," Creeden said. "New fears develop that they didn't have prior to an incident like this. We also often see an increase in aggressive behavior with kids that age."

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