NEW ORLEANS — Police are trying to figure out how an eight-year-old-child was shot in his home.
He died later at UMC. It happened when his siblings were in the home as well.
It was a sad scene Wednesday morning just before noon.
A young brother and sister of the brother, they called Neon, had his blood on their hands and clothes.
Through tears they say he wasn't breathing and someone tried CPR.
The call came in to 6th district officers around 11:00 Wednesday morning. At a Central City fourplex, police found the child inside his home in the 3200 block of Second Street. The call originally came in as a possible stray bullet that came through the outside wall, striking the child in the abdomen, but police have more questions than answers.
“That is something that the investigators are looking at, but there are a lot of unanswered questions that we have to really go through before we really definitively say whether or not that is what occurred, or if something else occurred,” said NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson.
And there are more questions as investigators and the child abuse division comb through evidence.
“We do not know if this is self-inflicted. We do not know if this was accidental. We do not know if this was intentional. What I can say is that we did not receive any calls of any gunfire being shot in this block.
The scene was heartbreaking. The teen sister of the young boy who died, could be heard crying out that her little brother was so happy the night before, that she can't be without all of her siblings, and she wished she would have been the one to go. She also cried out for police not to take her mother, because that was all she had.
The siblings said their mother was in handcuffs.
“We have a couple of people again, detained and being questioned right now. I believe the mother is one of the individuals that is being questioned,” said Ferguson.
Police say they have not recovered the weapon, nor do they have a suspect.
“We really do not have much right now. So, we're just asking the community if they have any information that can point us in the right direction, and lead us to some sort of closure in identifying what actually occurred on this morning. We would be very grateful.”
Later three social workers came to the scene to talk to family and those distraught children.
The Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center at Children's Hospital is there to counsel children all the way to 21 years of age.
504- 658-5300 To give NOPD any information.
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