A Louisiana man was arrested for allegedly shooting and wounding a 14-year-old girl who was playing hide-and-seek on his property, authorities said.
Deputies responded to a shooting early Sunday morning at a home in Starks, located near the Louisiana-Texas border, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office. announced in a statement.
A 14-year-old girl was found with a gunshot wound to the back of the head on the property of 58-year-old David Van Doyle. Further investigation revealed that several minors, whom the sheriff’s office identified as neighbors, were playing hide and seek. search the area and hide on Doyle’s property.
Van Doyle told detectives that he saw «shadows» outside his home, went inside to get his firearm, then «came back outside and watched people fleeing his property, at which point he began shooting at them and without Knowing it, he hit the girl. press release states.
Van Doyle was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and unlawful discharge of a firearm, according to the sheriff’s office. His bail is still pending.
It is not known at this time if he has an attorney.
The 14-year-old girl was taken to a hospital for treatment for 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 about gun violence, as well as «hold 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 house in Kansas City, Missouri. Andrew Lester, a white man in his 80s, was accused of shooting Yarl, who is black, and charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
The teen was shot in the head, cracking his skull and leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, according to his family’s attorney, Lee Merritt.
On April 15 in upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was fatally shot after the car in which she was traveling with her boyfriend and two friends veered off the wrong way while searching for the home of a friend. Kevin Monahan, 65, was arrested on a second degree murder charge.
On April 18 in Texas, two cheerleaders were shot, one seriously, after one of them tried to get into the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot. The suspect, 25-year-old Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 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 across their lawn, according to a neighbor. Robert Louis Singletary, 24, turned himself in days later in Tampa, Florida, after a manhunt.