The first volley of gunfire, a few dozen shots or so from up the block, sent 6-year-old Tacarra Morgan scrambling off the front porch step toward the safety of her grandparents' home.



Her grandmother was in a chair nearby. Her mother was sitting on stacked milk crates with a piece of carpet on top.



The shots came from someone in a convoy of three cars that had turned onto Paulina from 59th Street around 1 p.m. Tuesday. The whole neighborhood scattered. Guys playing basketball at 59th and Marshfield ducked and ran. Another group, the apparent targets, fled south on Paulina.



A second volley rang out, again a few dozen shots.



Tacarra had turned and made it close to the door when a round hit the left side of her abdomen. Other rounds punctured glass windows and aluminum siding in her grandparents' house.



No one else was hit. The convoy fled under a police camera at 60th and Paulina that investigators hope will yield some evidence.



Arthur Morris, 76, heard the commotion and found his granddaughter upstairs, the left side of her abdomen torn open by a bullet.



"Granddad, I been shot,'' she said. "Look, I been shot."



Tacarra did not cry. She tugged at her grandfather and drifted in and out of consciousness, Morris said.



"She was afraid," he said. "And she wanted to be with me."



Morris' 48-year-old son Anthony heard the shots while playing basketball on Marshfield. He called home after it settled and found out his niece had been shot. He ran home and found Tacarra on the couch.



"Tony, I been shot," she said.



"I was like, look, we got to go," Anthony Morris said.



He picked her up and carried her outside to a waiting car. Police had started swarming the neighborhood and stopped him.



"Nah, you might do more harm than good," he was told. "(But) I didn't want my niece suffering and the quicker she can get to a hospital, the quicker she can be all right."



He carried her out of the car and gently laid her in the street and waited until paramedics arrived. She didn't cry until her mother cried, the younger Morris said.



As paramedics tended to Tacarra, the girl tried to keep paramedics from putting an oxygen mask on her face. She asked for her grandfather.



"All this was hanging out" -- Anthony Morris pointed to the side above his left hip -- "but wasn't no blood. I felt real sad. She don't need to go through nothing like that."



The elder Morris tried to comfort his wife, who went to the hospital with Tacarra. She had collapsed with grief near the scene before gathering herself up and heading to Comer Children's Hospital.



Tacarra was listed in critical but stable condition Tuesday evening after undergoing surgery, police said. "Her prognosis is that she should be OK," said top police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi on Tuesday night.