Police seek answers in child’s shooting of younger sister
CUMBERLAND, Ind. (WISH) — Police want to know how a 5-year-old child got his hands on a gun and shot his younger sister.
Some neighbors tell News 8 that on any given day, they’d see the two children outside playing and just having fun, but since the shooting, the neighborhood just hasn’t been the same.
“Usually, those babies are outside playing and yelling and we’d wave ‘hi’ and they’d wave ‘hi,’ and today is just sad,” Katherine Tex said.
This Cumberland community is devastated after learning that a 5-year-old boy shot his four-year-old sister Deor Neita on Wednesday afternoon.
According to police, a great-grandmother was supervising four siblings who were playing upstairs when the shooting happened, and the mother was at work.
“At this point, I don’t believe anything was intentional. I think it was, the child probably found a gun, played with it, and then it obviously just goes off,” Detective Mark Waggoner of the Cumberland Police Department said.
“I have lost my son six years ago to gun violence, so it gives me chill bumps just sitting here talking to you, that a mother would have to bury their child at an early age,” Lentine Stewart said.
The Cumberland Police Department says they do not know who the firearm belongs to yet.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to tell who’s been touching that gun, fingerprint DNA, and hopefully tie it to somebody,” Waggoner said.
“We have somebody who we believe the firearm belongs to. We’re just wanting to tie it to that person,” Waggoner said.
The neighborhood has now become violent.
“Unfortunately, that complex is a focus of a lot of gun play at the moment. We are doing what we can to combat that,” Waggoner said.
He says that there are plans to add more patrolling and cameras in the area.
“The gun violence is just absolutely outrageous. We hear gunshots almost every night at this point. It’s constant, but I still don’t understand how that happened,” Tex said.
Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-8477.
