PlayWSB-TVWATCH 14-year-old pregnant girl killed by stray bullet, Atlanta police say
A pregnant teen was killed by a stray bullet while inside an apartment complex in southwest Atlanta, according to police.
The teen was shot just after 6:30 p.m. on Monday, the Atlanta Police Department said in a statement. When police arrived at the apartment, the Pavilion Place apartment complex, they found the teen dead with a gunshot wound to her head.
It appears that the gunshot came from the apartment directly above where the teen was, according to a statement from police.
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Investigators are trying to determine whether the shooting was accidental. An arrest has not been made, police said.
The victim’s family identified her as 14-year-old Sonja Star Harrison, who was 8 months pregnant, ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB-TV reported .
WSB-TVSonja Denise Harrison, the mother of 14-year-old victim Sonja Star Harrison, said her daughter was planning to finish school and then later enlist in the army.
The unborn baby, a girl, did not survive the shooting, the victim’s mother Sonja Denise Harrison told WSB-TV. The baby was due just before New Year’s Day, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Not only they took one life, they took two,” the victim’s mother, Sonja Denise Harrison said to WSB-TV.
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The teen was planning to finish school and later enlist in the U.S. Army, “for her and her baby,” her mother said, adding that the shooter has caused heartbreak in her family.
“They took my baby’s future,” she said to WSB-TV.
Sonja Denise Harrison expressed concerns about safety in the apartment complex.
“They can allow anybody to come through these apartments,” she said.
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A few hours after the teen was found dead, police were called back to the apartment complex to find a 21-year-old woman dead from a gunshot wound to the head, WSB-TV reported. Police were told that the woman committed suicide but are investigating the woman’s boyfriend, according to the station. The shootings don’t appear to be related, police told WSB-TV.
Witness Brandie Harden, who was at the apartment complex at the time, told WSB-TV that she “heard one single shot.”
“I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m very afraid. It’s dangerous out here.”
ABC News could not immediately reach a property manager from the complex for comment. Residents told WSB-TV that apartment complex staff is usually available, but blinds to the office remained closed on Tuesday.
The Journal-Constitution reported that a 24-year-old woman was shot and killed in the apartment in 2015.
Sonja Star Harrison, who was killed Wednesday, was an eighth-grader at Freedom Middle School in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and had three brothers and three sisters, the Journal-Constitution reported.
She was babysitting three of her nephews at her sister’s apartment when she was shot, according to the Journal-Constitution.