A teenager in Alabama was fatally shot in his room on Friday, and was likely an unintended target of gunfire, according to the local police department.
The 13-year-old boy was playing on his iPad in his Tuscaloosa home Friday evening, when a barrage of bullets were shot through the bedroom window and struck him in the head, the Tuscaloosa Police Department said in a statement.
“There were so many shell casings in the road, officers had to pull business cards from their wallets to fold and use as temporary evidence markers,” the department wrote on its Facebook page.
Tuscaloosa Police Chief Brent Blankley labeled the shooting, which police responded to about 6:20 p.m. Friday, “a senseless murder.”
“It’s a senseless murder. We see it all the time where adults are shot and it’s terrible, but when it’s a kid, it takes it to another level,” Blankley said in a video posted Friday evening
on the police department’s Facebook page. “When you see that and you see the senseless tragedy of that, it hits you different.”
The shooting wasn’t accidental though the teenager was likely not the intended target of it, according to Capt. Marty Sellers of the Tuscaloosa Police Department Violent Crimes Unit.
“It was an on-purpose shooting, but [the teen] was probably not the target of that. We are looking at people that are possible suspects. We are looking at some vehicles that we are trying to locate, so we are still actively working,” Sellers said, according to CNN affiliate WBRC.