The child was identified by the local medical examiner as Messiah Taplin.
According to police, a 4-year-old boy was shot dead in Arlington, Texas, in the first hour of the new year.
Police shot the boy, who was identified by Tarrant County Medical Examiner as Messiah Taplin, around 12:30 a.m. Friday and died at a local hospital just after 1 p.m.
Police said they had detained “persons of interest” for questioning in the murder investigation. But no arrests were made.
Officers went to an apartment complex in the northern part of the suburban city of Dallas after a 911 caller reported hearing gunshots, the Arlington police station said in a statement.
When officers arrived there, they reportedly followed a trail of blood that led to an open apartment.
“Officers went inside and discovered a crime scene. No one was in the apartment at the time,” the statement said.
While officers were investigating the scene, a vehicle drove into the parking lot that matched a car that left the apartment complex shortly after the shooting, police said. Officers stopped the car and detained the occupants.
It was not immediately clear if the people in the car were the “persons of interest” being questioned by police.
Murder detectives were later notified by police in Grand Prairie, about 11 miles east of Arlington, that a 4-year-old boy had been taken to a hospital in their city and died from an apparent gunshot wound, according to a statement.
“Investigators believe the child was shot in the Arlington complex in Washington Drive and they are trying to determine exactly what happened,” police said in the statement.
No further information was available about the child’s death.
The child’s death was the second fatal shooting to which Arlington police responded in the first hour of the new year. At 12:25 a.m., officers received a call of gunfire in a neighborhood in east Arlington and discovered a woman suffering from an apparent gunshot wound on the back porch of a home, police said in a statement. . The woman, whose name was not immediately released, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Investigators do not believe it was self-inflicted and that someone shot the woman on the back porch,” the police statement read.
No arrest was made in the shooting incident.
Authorities have asked anyone with information about the murder to contact Arlington police investigators or the Tarrant County Crime Stoppers line.