Evans Mutisya sits hunched over on a chair to the side of the road in the Mukuru kwa Njenga informal settlement, or slum, in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The fifteen-year-old’s head rests heavily in the palms of his hands. He is writhing in pain. For more than a week, he has been in the hospital where doctors have attempted to treat a bullet wound.

On December 27, as Nairobi’s residents spent time with family or traveled to the coastal region for the holidays, the impoverished residents of Mukuru kwa Njenga were gifted with live bullets by Kenyan police. Dozens of families, including Mutisya and his family, have slept in a sprawling tent settlement for more than two months, erected on top of the ruins of their homes, destroyed in a mass government demolition campaign that began in October. Bulldozers destroyed at least 13,000 homes, along with businesses and schools, and displaced some 76,000 people.

Tensions reached their breaking point on December 27 when clashes broke out between police and residents. Mutisya was inside one of the makeshift tents at the time. “They [the police] were shooting tear gas and the gas came into the tent,” Mutisya recounts, speaking in a low tone. “I ran out from the tent and toward the water tank on the street to wash my face.” At that moment, a police officer shot the teen in the lower back, the bullet exiting from the front of his stomach.