She called police more than 40 times about teens harassing her. Then she shot one.

In the months since he was shot in the head, 15-year-old Vernon Marcus Jr. has only just begun to walk again.

He’s paralyzed on his right side and can’t speak, his mother, Bridgett Marcus, said Tuesday during a bond hearing for Elizabeth Cannon, the 47-year-old former nurse who shot him outside her house Jan. 16.

Marcus said her son, an aspiring athlete who got good grades in school, had been walking home. She was waiting for him, cooking dinner when she got a call that he’d been shot.

“She turned my baby into an infant in a fraction of seconds, back to diapers and formula,” Marcus said.

Cannon initially was charged with two counts of aggravated assault. A magistrate set a bond using a set list of amounts based on her charges. Cannon was released from jail in a matter of hours.

Indicted on a new charge of aggravated battery last month, Cannon appeared in court Tuesday seeking a bond on that charge. She’d need a bond on all charges to remain out of jail as she awaits trial.

After hearing arguments from District Attorney David Cooke and Cannon’s lawyer, Floyd Buford, the judge denied bond, citing concerns that Cannon could be a danger to the community.

During the hearing, Buford said his client had called police 40 or more times in the six months or so before the shooting, asking for help after being harassed and threatened by teenagers outside the Bloomfield Drive home where she’s lived since 1996.

Sometimes police came. Other times they didn’t.

“The incidents continued to happen,” he said.

The teens trespassed and loitered on the edge of her property, wearing what she perceived to be gang colors, Buford said.

Gang members would come into her yard and destroy political signs, he said.

Cooke confirmed that Cannon has called police “constantly,” but in a manner that “is not always described as stable.”

“There are serious questions about her mental and emotional stability,” the district attorney said.

For an undisclosed reason, Cannon’s family was keeping her .38-caliber handgun for her and expressed concerns about giving it back to her when she demanded it, he said.

“They were afraid, based on what they observed about her demeanor and her recent conduct, about what she might do with it once she got it,” Cooke said. “It appears that their fears were well founded.”

Days before the Jan. 16 shooting, Cannon reported a group of boys to police after seeing them peeking into a nearby vacant house and hiding a 4-wheeler in weeds behind her house. Deputies confronted the boys and told them to stay away from Cannon’s house, Buford said.

Earlier on the day Marcus was shot, Cannon called 911 and told a responding deputy that she had a gun and she would teach the group giving her trouble not to mess with her, Cooke said.

Buford said a group Cannon had trouble with before returned to her yard about 6:30 p.m. Jan. 16, yelled racial epithets at her, threatened her and threw rocks — some as large as what Buford described as small boulders — at her house.

Intending to shoot at the ground, Cannon fired about five times, he said.

While on the phone with 911 and running down the sidewalk outside the house to see where the group had gone, she spotted the injured Marcus, Buford said.

She told the 911 dispatcher about the injured teen and told Marcus to “hang on,” he said.

Evidence shows that Marcus, who had just turned 15, was shot in the back of the head 30 feet from Cannon’s driveway, 150 feet from her house, Cooke said.

“From what we can tell, he was minding his own business, walking away from her house,” he said.

Like Cannon, he doesn’t have a criminal record, the district attorney said.

Speaking during the hearing, Marcus’ mother said her son didn’t wear gang colors. He wears mostly white T-shirts.

He’s never been suspended from school.

“He doesn’t understand what happened to him,” Bridgett Marcus said. “I want justice.”

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 11:14 AM with the headline "She called police more than 40 times about teens harassing her. Then she shot one.."