A GUNMAN WAS ON A BICYCLE CHASING A SNITCH WHEN HE STARTED SHOOTING! HE ACCIDENTLY SHOOTS A GIRL WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL IN THE HEAD!

A 15-year-old Bronx girl was fighting for her life Monday night after a stray bullet slammed into her head as she innocently walked near a dispute between armed thugs.
As Vada Vasquez underwent emergency brain surgery, cops hunted for a bicycle-riding gunman who fired wildly at a man suspected of being a snitch.

Her traumatized family was inconsolable.

"This shouldn't happen to a little girl who was on her way home from school," her sister Allison said inside Lincoln Hospital last night. "This is a tragedy."

Another sibling simply cried, "That's my sister!"

Vada and a friend were near the corner of Home St. and Prospect Ave., just blocks from her school, Bronx Latin in Morrisania, when a dispute erupted between a group of men near the Davidson Houses at 3:45 p.m., cops said.

Tyrone Creighton, 19, scrambled down Home St. in an effort to get away, but the gunman-on-wheels whipped out a .40-caliber handgun and gave chase, police sources said.

Creighton was halfway down Home St. from the intersection where Vada was standing when the gunman - who wore a hooded sweatshirt and a Yankees cap - opened fire.

Bullets hit Creighton in the torso and leg, but a stray shot screamed down the block and slammed into the back of Vada's head, the sources said.

"She had nothing to do with this guy," one police source said.

Another police source confirmed that account, saying Vada was "definitely an innocent."

The bullet shattered inside the middle of Vada's brain, and there was no exit wound.

She was talking at the scene and then to doctors at Lincoln Hospital, who put her into a medically induced coma for the operation, sources said.

"She made it through surgery," a police source said. "The doctors say the next few days will tell."

Witness Raul Rivera, 32, was at a nearby deli when he heard three shots ring out and saw three teens dart away from the scene.

"She did not even know she got hit," he said of Vada. "Her friends were around her, just saying, 'Wake Up! Wake Up!'"

Witness Jessica Sepulveda, 32, described a gut-wrenching scene as she came to Vada's aid before paramedics arrived.

"At first, she was just still. She woke up after a couple of minutes. She jumped up - I told her to lay down, stay calm," Sepulveda said, still stunned. "When she moved, the blood started coming out. She had no idea what was going on."

FDNY paramedics frantically applied pressure to the back of Vada's head to stop the flow of blood from her wound.

Vada described herself on her MySpace page as a fan of horror flicks and heavy metal music, and said she had a talent for drawing.

She posted touching pictures where she posed with her mother, and gushed in a recent post about getting a new laptop for her birthday last month.

She was thrilled at seeing "Phantom of the Opera," and used her Facebook page to contact Broadway actor John Cudia last month. "Your performance blew me away," she wrote.

Cudia thanked her for seeing the show, and added, "Be well."

Creighton, who has prior arrests for assault and robbery, was listed in critical condition at Lincoln Hospital, police sources said.

It was unclear what sparked the beef that led to the shooting, and no one had been arrested last night, police sources said.

A woman who lives near the scene of the shooting, Jaqueline Elmore, 45, said Creighton was targeted for being a snitch.

The senseless shooting shocked parents of students at Bronx Latin.

"It's horrible. That's why I drop off my kids at school and pick them up," said Margarita Martinez, 50. "That could have been my kid."

Martinez's 13-year-old son, Freddie De La Cruz, described Vada as a happy, quiet girl.

"She's a nice girl. She doesn't get in trouble," Freddie said. "She did not deserve this."