An 8-year-old girl was shot and killed in Houston, Texas on Saturday just moments after surviving a car crash.
According to police, the child and her mother were travelling home when their Honda Accord struck a Pontiac in the middle of an intersection.
Authorities said the Pontiac and a third car were speeding when the Pontiac was hit by the vehicle the child was in.
Speaking with Houston’s KPRC News, the child’s mother said they were travelling through the intersection when the incident occurred.
“The light was green, and as soon as I got to the light it turned yellow — I couldn’t stop,” Latoyia Thomas said.
Thomas told the news station the other vehicle was “coming at a very high rate of speed and we just collided.”
With her child asleep in the back seat, Thomas ended up t-boning the Pontiac in the middle of the intersection.
The mother told the Houston news station that after the collision, the driver of the vehicle she struck jumped into the third vehicle which then pulled up alongside Thomas’s car.
“I saw the girl let the window down and point the gun out the window, she just started shooting,” Thomas said.
The vehicle then fled the scene and police said it remains unclear if the shooter and the driver of the Pontiac are the same person.
Speaking with ABC News, the mother said she didn’t realize her daughter had been shot until she went to lift her out of the car.
“I said ‘Are you OK?’ and she was still asleep,” Thomas said. “She never even knew what happened.”
Police said at least eight shots were fired before the suspects fled.
“She’s an innocent child, that’s the worst kind of victim,” a police spokesperson told ABC News.
The child was rushed to hospital following the shooting where she later died of her injuries.
“Never thought I’d be burying my 8-year-old daughter,” Thomas told ABC News. “That was my baby.”
–with a file from the Associated Press
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