The local forensic doctor identified the boy as Messiah Taplin.
A 4-year-old boy was shot dead in Arlington, Texas, in the early hours of the new year, according to police.
The boy, identified by Tarrant County coroner as Messiah Taplin, was shot at about 12:30 a.m. Friday and died shortly after 1 a.m. at a local hospital, police said.
Police said they had arrested “people of interest” for questioning them in the homicide investigation. But no arrests have been made.
Officers went to an apartment complex in the northern part of the suburban city of Dallas after a person who called 911 reported that he had heard gunshots, the Arlington police department said in a statement.
When officers arrived, they followed a trail of blood leading to a keyless apartment, according to the statement.
“Officers entered and discovered a crime scene. At that time there was no one inside the apartment,” the statement said.
While officers were investigating the scene, a vehicle entered the parking lot that coincided with a car seen coming out of the apartment complex shortly after the shooting, police said. Officers stopped the car and stopped its occupants.
It was not immediately known if the people inside the car were the “people of interest” the police are questioning.
Police later reported homicide detectives in Grand Prairie, about 7 miles east of Arlington, that a 4-year-old boy was taken to a hospital in his hometown and died of a apparent bullet wound, according to the statement.
“Investigators believe the boy was shot at the Arlington complex on Washington Drive and are working to determine exactly what happened,” police said in the statement.
No further information was available on the child’s death.
The boy’s death was the second fatal shot the Arlington police responded to in the early hours of the new year. At 12:25 a.m., officers received a shooting call in a residential neighborhood east of Arlington and discovered a woman suffering from an apparent pistol on the back porch of a home, police reported in a statement. The woman, whose name was not released immediately, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Investigators don’t believe this could have caused itself and that someone shot the woman in the back porch,” the police statement says.
No arrests were made during the shooting.
Authorities asked anyone with information about the killing to contact Arlington police investigators or the Tarrant County line.