A Texas toddler has been fatally shot by his mother’s boyfriend who raided their home with an assault-style rifle Friday night.
Houston Police said that the suspect swarmed the mobile home where Elijah Valencia Garcia’s mom had sheltered with him amid a violent domestic dispute.
The unidentified suspect was armed with a rifle and started firing at the home that belonged to the 3-year-old’s mom’s ex-boyfriend.
The woman was injured in the leg and hand, police said, but little Elijah sustained fatal gunshot wounds and did not survive.
“What we found here was a female victim who had been shot by a suspect believed to be her current boyfriend. They had been involved in some kind of verbal altercation that’s still under investigation,” police said.
Responding officers arrived at the scene within a few minutes and found the suspect still holding the riffle and several magazines.
A fierce gunfight followed ending the suspect’s life at the hands of a 25-year-old officer.
“As a father, I think all of us here have children and young people we love, it’s heart-wrenching when you think about a little child’s life has ended here,” Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
“We will never talk about this child again as a society…he will go into the annals of the victims of this country of gun violence and nothing will be done by members of the legislature by members of Congress to do more to stop this senseless act.”
