Two young boys were shot when a stray bullet ripped through the wall of their Las Vegas Valley apartment on Tuesday night — and one of them, a 9-year-old, has died from his injuries.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police responded to the Town & Country Manor apartment complex shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday after receiving reports of a shooting. The two boys were struck while watching the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants.
Nine-year-old SirArmani Clark was killed. His 6-year-old brother, Honor Tate, was shot in the leg. Honor is expected to recover.
After hearing the gunshots, the boys’ family members came running from the next room.
“We heard Honor whimper,” the boys’ mother, Justine Tate, told News. “No sound from Armani. He doesn’t say anything. All I can visualize at this point is my baby’s head dropping and falling to the side.”
Authorities believe that one of the family’s neighbors fired the deadly shot.
“There appears to be a gunshot that came from a neighboring apartment that went through the wall and into their apartment and struck the juvenile,” Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Jason Johansson told the Review-Journal.
The neighbor was arrested after the shooting. Authorities have not publicly named him, but said that he was a convicted felon who should not have been using a gun.
“He is out there showing off with a gun, and then pulls the trigger on the gun and kills one kid and hospitalizes another,” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told the Review-Journal.
It’s unclear what charges the neighbor will face.
The shooting has devastated the boys’ family. They have created a GoFundMe to raise money for funeral expenses.
“If I could have took that bullet for them, I would have,” Justine Tate told Fox 5. “I would rather them live without a mommy than to lose their life.”