BOSTON -- Five years after a stray bullet left her paralyzed, a Boston girl received a videotaped apology from the shooter on Wednesday.

Shooter Reaches Out To Young Victim

Kai Leigh Harriott was just 3 when she was shot while playing outside her family's Dorchester home in 2003. The bullet severed her spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.

"It made me not want to be cold and hard, made me really take a look at myself," Anthony Warren said in the video apology to the girl.

Warren was one of nine inmates who took part in a video project for Boston's Peace Month.

"I want to thank Kai Leigh; I want to thank her mother; I want to thank her family. I want to apologize to my community. I just appreciate the opportunity that you gave me," Warren said.

"It was really nice because somebody actually took what I said, and he is trying to make a difference to anybody else that does crime, and they can change people's lives," Kai Leigh said.

When she was 6, Kai Leigh told Warren that she forgave him.

"I forgive you, Anthony Warren. What you did to me was wrong, but I still forgive you," Kai Leigh said during Warren's 2006 sentencing hearing.

Warren is serving a 13 to 15 year sentence at Old Colony Correctional Center for the shooting.

"I pray that he will take one step further and that he will find inner peace within himself by forgiving himself," said Kai Leigh's mother, Tonya David.

"I want to say to him thank you for making that apology video because you can inspire so many other people by telling them don't carry around guns," Kai Leigh said.

The full video, called "Voices from Behind the Wall," will be shown to Boston-area teenagers at a youth peace conference in May.

A coalition of Boston's religious leaders, elected officials and community groups first declared May Peace Month in 2007. The tradition continues in 2008 with dozens of peace-centric events and programs designed to curb violence in Boston.