Neighbor Arrested for Shooting 14-Year-Old Girl in Head While She Played Hide-and-Seek With Friends

A 58-year-old man has been arrested and charged after allegedly shooting a 14-year-old girl in the back of the head while she was playing hide-and-seek with friends.

Per a news release from the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana, David V. Doyle has told detectives that he “observed people running away from his property” over the weekend, at which point he grabbed a gun and “began shooting at them.” Doyle, according to said news release, also said he “retrieved his firearm” after seeing “shadows outside his home.”

An “initial investigation” results in responding deputies discovering a 14-year-old girl who was, in their words, “suffering from a gunshot wound to the back of her head.” The alleged shooter, reported to be a neighbor to the victim, was ultimately arrested and booked into a local correctional facility. He’s been charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault with a firearm, and illegal discharge of a firearm. The injuries to the 14-year-old victim, police added, were “non-life threatening.”

News of the shooting follows a string of high-profile incidents of a similarly depressing variety, including the shooting of a Black teen who rang the wrong doorbell and the fatal shooting of a woman who pulled into the wrong driveway.

Of course, it’s hard not to feel numb to stories like this at this point in the country’s long-maintained relationship with guns. It’s the kind of relationship that everyone recognizes as toxic and a total detriment to anyone unlucky enough to be caught up in its various fuckeries—yet it continues, sometimes purely to spite those who dare to call out the abject bullshit it incessantly generates.

In short—America loves guns and it loves them more than it loves its people, including children. 

Meanwhile, in other countries, actual action is routinely taken in response to gun violence.