A Louisiana man was arrested for allegedly shooting and wounding a 14-year-old girl playing hide-and-seek on his property, officials said.
Deputies responded to a shooting early Sunday morning at a home in Starks, located near the border of Louisiana and Texas, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office announced in a statement.
A 14-year-old girl was found with a gunshot wound to the back of her head on the property of David Van Doyle, 58. Further investigation revealed that several minors, who the sheriff’s office identified as neighbors, were playing hide-and-seek in the area and hiding on Doyle’s property.
Van Doyle told detectives he saw “shadows” outside his home, went inside to get his firearm, then “went back outside and observed people running away from his property, at which time he began shooting at them and unknowingly hit the girl,” the news release states.
Van Doyle was arrested and charged with aggravated battery, four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and illegal discharge of a firearm, according to the sheriff’s office. His bond is still pending.
It’s not known at this time if he has an attorney.
The 14-year-old girl was taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.
The investigation is ongoing, the sheriff’s office said.
The shooting in Louisiana is the latest of at least four similar incidents, sparking a national conversation around gun violence as well as “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine,” both self-defense laws.
On April 13, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot when he rang the wrong doorbell while trying to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend’s home in Kansas City, Missouri. Andrew Lester, a white man in his 80s, was accused of shooting Yarl, who is Black, and charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action.
The teen was shot in the head, which cracked his skull and left him with a traumatic brain injury, according to his family’s attorney, Lee Merritt.
On April 15 in upstate New York, Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally shot after the car she was in with her boyfriend and two friends turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house. Kevin Monahan, 65, was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder.
On April 18 in Texas, two cheerleaders were shot, one critically, after one of them mistakenly tried to get into the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot. The suspect, Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, was charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, police said.
In North Carolina, also on April 18, a man allegedly shot and wounded a 6-year-old girl and her father after a basketball rolled into his lawn, according to a neighbor. Robert Louis Singletary, 24, turned himself in days later in Tampa, Florida, after a manhunt.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
