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Detroit police: 6-year-old girl fatally shot in the head
Five young children were left alone in the vehicle with a loaded gun, police say.
DETROIT - Detroit police are responding to the scene of a fatal shooting of a child on the city's east side near Gratiot and Harper.
The backstory:
A 6-year-old girl was shot in the head with an unsecured weapon and has died, according to Detroit police. The accident happened just after 12 p.m. in the parking lot of a strip mall.
Five children were left alone inside a vehicle with a loaded gun by the mother, who went into a restaurant to pick up food, said First Assistant Detroit Police Chief Charles Fitzgerald.
"At some point in time one of the kids tried to grab her but it was a little too late, one of the kids was shot in the head unsecured weapon," he said. "These things are so preventable."
Fitzgerald said it is unclear that another sibling inside the vehicle shot the other, "We're still working through it."
He was asked how the mother is handling the tragedy - he said, "As you can imagine, the mom is a mess."
"We'll have to figure out what's going on with the weapon, why it was there, why it was left unattended," he said. "Then we'll present our findings to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office."
Stay with FOX 2 for more information as it becomes available.
The Source: Information for this report is from Detroit police.