A 14-year-old girl was shot in the back of the head by her neighbour while she and a group of kids played hide and seek in the area and on the neighbour’s property, authorities in Louisiana said Monday.
David V. Doyle, 58, was arrested for the incident and charged with four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, aggravated battery, and illegal discharge of a firearm, police wrote in a news release.
This is just the latest incident of gun violence that has broken out in the last several weeks, seemingly due to innocuous mistakes.
Deputies with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to a home in Starks, La., after receiving a 911 call about a shooting early Sunday.
Officers found a 14-year-old suffering from a gunshot wound to the back of her head. She was transported to a hospital out of town and was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
During the initial investigation, police learned that the victim and several children had been playing hide and seek on a neighbour’s property. When officers went to speak to the property’s owner, Doyle, he stated “he observed shadows outside his home,” and so went back inside his home to retrieve his firearm.
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Doyle told detectives he went back outside with the gun and “observed people running away from his property, at which time he began shooting at them and unknowingly hit the girl.”
Doyle is behind bars at the Calcasieu Correctional Center while he awaits his bond hearing.
The investigation is ongoing, police said.
This most recent case of gun violence against a young person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time comes less than three weeks after a six-year-old girl in Florida was shot by a neighbour, reportedly because the child’s basketball rolled into his yard.
Days before that incident, three other similar shootings took place. Two cheerleaders were shot in Texas after trying to enter the wrong vehicle, a 20-year-old woman who turned down the wrong driveway in New York was shot and killed and a 16-year-old who rang the wrong doorbell in Kansas City was shot.
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