The child was identified by the local medical examiner as Messiah Taplin.
Police say a 4-year-old boy in Arlington, Texas, was shot in the first hour of the new year.
The boy, identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner as Messiah Taplin, was shot around 12:30 p.m. Friday and died at a local hospital just after 1:00 a.m., police said.
Police said they have detained “individuals of interest” for questioning in the murder investigation. But no arrests have been made.
Officers went to an apartment complex in the north suburb of Dallas after an emergency caller reported hearing gunshots, Arlington police said in a statement.
When officers arrived, they followed a trail of blood that led to an unlocked apartment, the statement said.
“Officers went in and discovered a crime scene. There was no one in the apartment at the time,” the statement read.
While officers were investigating the scene, a vehicle pulled into the parking lot corresponding to a car leaving the apartment complex shortly after the shooting, police said. Officers stopped the car and detained the occupants.
It was not immediately clear whether the people in the car were the “persons of interest” that the police questioned.
Homicide detectives were later notified by police in Grand Prairie, about 7 miles east of Arlington, that a 4-year-old boy had been taken to a hospital in their town and died of an apparent gunshot wound, the statement said.
Investigators believe the child was shot in the Arlington complex on Washington Drive and are working to determine exactly what happened, police said in the statement.
No further information was available about the death of the child.
The child’s death was the second fatal shooting to which Arlington police responded in the first hour of the new year. At 12:25 p.m., officers received a call with shots fired in a residential neighborhood in eastern Arlington and discovered a woman suffering from an apparent gunshot wound on the front porch of a house, police said in a statement. The woman, whose name was not immediately released, was pronounced dead on the spot.
Investigators do not believe this was self-caused and that someone shot the woman on the porch, the police statement read.
No arrest was made in the shooting.
Authorities asked anyone with information about either murder to contact Arlington Police Department or the Tarrant County Crime Stoppers line.