THREE GANG MEMBERS in London have been convicted today over a shooting a five-year-old girl in March of last year, leaving her paralysed for life.

Five-year-old Thushara Kamaleswaran was playing in her uncle’s grocery shop in Brixton, south London, last March when three members of a notorious gang arrived with the intention of shooting a suspected rival.

The little girl, better known as Thusha, was was caught in the crossfire: a stray bullet hit her in the chest and passed through the seventh vertebra of her spine, permanently paralysing her.

She went into cardiac arrest twice and had to undergo emergency surgery at the scene of the attack and later at hospital in order for her life to be saved.

Another unintended target of the attack, a 35-year-old man, miraculously survived after being shot in the face. However, Roshan Selvakumar has been left bullet fragments lodged in his head.

Today at the Old Bailey, Nathaniel Grant (21), Kazeem Kolawole (19), and Anthony McCalla (20) were all unanimously convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to both Thusha Kamaleswaran and Roshan Selvakumar, reports the Telegraph.  The men were also convicted of attempted murder of their intended victim, Roshaun Bryan.

Life for Thusha has changed utterly

Now aged six, Thusha is paralysed from the waist down and must wear a brace and leg splints permanently. She requires around-the-clock assistance and will use a wheelchair for the rest of her life, reports the Guardian.

Doctors say she may also have to undergo a series of operations in order to prevent her spine from curving.

Thusha’s mother allowed a statement to be read out in court, in which she said she still cried when she thought about her daughter’s future. She describes Thusha as “a playful child, always happy and smiling” before the attack.

She described her shock of the day Thusha was shot:

The children all were there in the shop, playing and dancing and within seconds of that Thusha was lying on the floor crying and saying she couldn’t feel her legs.

As Sharmila Kamaleswaran’s statement was read aloud, one of the defendants – Nathaniel Grant – hung his head. His fellow defendants displayed no emotion.

The defendants are all members of the south London ‘Gas’ gang, which has been implicated in a spate of murders, robberies and near-fatal attacks.