A 7-year-old boy in Kentucky was killed Sunday night when a stray bullet smashed through a window in his home and struck him in the neck.
Dequante Hobbs Jr. was killed as he sat at the kitchen table of his Louisville home. He was eating a piece of cake and playing on his iPad before bed, a Louisville Metro Police Department spokeswoman said.
During a Monday morning news conference, Lt. Emily McKinley said that Dequante was an innocent victim of the “senseless violence” going on in the city.
“If this doesn’t wake anybody up, then I don’t know what will,” McKinley said.
McKinley said that a fight apparently took place just before 8:30 p.m. on Sunday at a home behind the one where Dequante lived. One of the people involved in the fight pulled a gun and opened fire.
“They just shot through my window,” Dequante’s mother, Micheshia Norment, told WLKY in Louisville. “It hit my baby in his neck.”
Norment said that she performed CPR on her son while awaiting paramedics and was able to find a pulse. An ambulance later took him to Norton Children’s Hospital, where he died on the operating table.
“I never thought it’d be mine,” Norment said.
McKinley said that investigators were working around the clock to find leads in the case, but that no suspects had been identified. She pleaded with anyone who was present at the fight, including the shooter, to come forward.
“Obviously, no one intended for a 7-year-old to be killed,” McKinley said. “But unfortunately, this is where we are today. Last night was absolutely horrible. It was horrible for the family to go through, for our officers to go through, for our detectives to go through.”