CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A 4-year-old girl died Thursday night after being accidentally shot by another child inside of a home in Englewood on the South Side.
Makalah McKay, 4, and another child were said to have been going through a bag Thursday evening in a home on 64th and Carpenter when the other child took a gun out of the bag and pulled the trigger. A bullet hit the preschool age girl in the chest. Makalah was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, but did not survive.
The man who is believed to have brought the bag with the gun inside the home is being questioned by police.
According to Chicago Sun-Times data, Makalah McKay is the youngest child to die from gun violence in Chicago this year.
Outside the hospital, Makalah’s mother and other family members embraced each other as they struggled for answers.
“My sister called me screaming, and I knew it was something when she called me crying,” Makalah’s aunt, Mariah Roberts, told the Sun-Times. “And what came out her mouth was, ‘Makalah got shot.’”
“It hurts,” Roberts added, her eyes welling with tears.
After speaking with the family, Pastor Donavan Price told the Sun-Times that Makalah was at the home with her mother and some other kids, who he said were now under observation at the hospital.
“It’s so heart-wrenching. This mom here, her guts are ripped out right now,” he said.
Roberts demanded justice for Makalah’s death.
“People need to be locked up. Something needs to happen,” she said.
So far this year, 234 minors have been shot, 37 fatally. Twenty-seven were under the age of 13, according to Sun-Times data.
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