METHUEN - Michelle Pinto took the long way home Tuesday, thinking the evening spin up Pelham Street would give 7-month-old Skylar an extra 10 minutes to sleep.
But the baby girl's slumber was shattered when something smashed the back of the 2007 Mazda CX-7 she was riding in, sending Pinto rushing back down Pelham Street, wondering if Skylar and her 6-year-old brother, Dylan, were hurt.
"Everyone was OK, thankfully, but I didn't know," Pinto said. "My heart was just racing."
What had started as a calm nighttime drive after picking Dylan up from karate class had become a near tragedy for baby Skylar.
Pinto believes local teens broke the window, possibly with a BB gun, a rock or a snowball. She heard the crashing sound about 6:45 p.m., just after turning around at the intersection of Pelham Street and Hampshire Road, near the New Hampshire line.
Even after learning her children were safe, Pinto was angry to know that someone had been so callous to put them in danger.
"If it was three seconds earlier, it would have been the side window," she said.
"It's like, what? Ten degrees?" Pinto asked. "Who's sitting out there with a BB gun or pellet gun when it was 10 degrees, waiting for a car to come by?"
Pinto called 911 on her cell phone and was connected to Methuen police, who asked her to drive to the police station. Police Officer Jamie Moore drove out to Pelham Street and interviewed neighbors about the incident. One man said he heard a group of children outside earlier, but was not sure if they were connected to the broken windows.
Police do not know how the window was shattered.
"(Moore) assumed it was a BB gun or a pellet gun," Pinto said. "He felt awful. He had a little baby himself."
Pinto believes she was randomly targeted by whoever broke her window.
