"I can't sleep. I can't eat. Everything has been taken from me," Krissi Garcia said. "It's not fair, he was just barely 11. He was a sweet boy."
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The mother is now planning to bury her 11-year-old son Dominic Sumicek and her 41-year-old husband Manuel Solomon together.
Dominic was shot in an apartment complex parking lot on Old Farm Road at about 4:30 p.m. Monday.
Solomon was fatally shot while trying to shield Dominic from gunfire, multiple neighbors and the victim's ex told ABC13.
"When I saw my husband lying on the ground dead like that I thought that feeling was unbearable. I couldn't breathe," Garcia said.
SEE MORE: Houston rapper died shielding his girlfriend's 11-year-old son from gunfire, victim's ex says
Despite Solomon's efforts to protect the child, the 11-year-old was still mortally wounded. Dominic was pronounced dead at a hospital on Wednesday.
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"I should have been there to protect him. I was at work," she said.
The mother said she's distraught, and was planning to spend the holidays with the two people she loved most.
"I got Christmas presents in my hall closet that I've been saving since this summer," she said through her tears. "Manuel loves Dominic, he really did. He used to take him to get his little haircuts at the barbershops."
Police have not made any arrests and have only described the suspects as three Black males.
"It's one thing to take a grown man, but to take an innocent child, you just don't do that. They're cowards. They're just cowards. Only a coward has to catch a man with a child because he's vulnerable."
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