A four-year-old boy died on Friday in US’s Lancaster after a stray bullet hit him. According to the Los Angeles Times, a man unleashed a barrage of bullets into a family’s car after a road rage incident.
The child, who was sitting in the rear seat of the car, was hit by a bullet in his upper body, following which he was rushed to a hospital where doctors declared him dead.
The boy’s parents were not injured in the incident.
According to the Los Angeles police, the incident happened at 7:30 pm (local time), when the boy’s family was driving on the Sierra Highway in Lancaster.
A man and a woman cut their car in front of the family’s car and then followed them through several side streets, police added.
While being followed, the driver of the family’s car slowed his vehicle, prompting the suspects to stop alongside the passenger side of the victim’s car and begin shooting, police added.
Following the incident, two unidentified accused, a 29-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, were arrested on suspicion of murder by the police.
Speaking about the incident, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Paris said, “I know that they attend church regularly, I talked with members of the church they go to,” to CBS News.
“The entire congregation is just devastated,” he added.
Mayor Paris states that the swift identification of the suspect was made possible by the recently implemented network of cameras across the city, complemented by the victim’s dashcam.
“t’s multi-faceted… we’ve got cameras everywhere. We’ve got these ‘flock’ cameras, and we pretty much know anybody in the city’s license plate at this point, so we’re able to track it,” Paris said.
“The message we hope gets out there is: If you’re a criminal you probably shouldn’t come to Lancaster,” he added.