9-Year-Old Girl Accidentally Shot in Mall When Store Owner Allegedly Fired at Shoplifters

A nine-year-old girl was accidentally shot on Tuesday while waiting in line to meet a Southern California mall’s Easter Bunny.

NBC Los Angeles reports the incident took place Tuesday night at the Mall of Victor Valley in Victorville. Ava Chruniak was getting ready to have her picture taken with the character when she was shot by Marqel Cockrell, 20, the co-owner of Sole Addicts at the mall. He allegedly opened fire while chasing two shoplifters.

Chruniak suffered three gunshot wounds, including two in an arm. One of the bullets fractured a bone in her arm. She was released from the hospital on Thursday, but is expected to return for another operation to repair nerve damage.

“She has three gunshot wounds. Two are in the arm down here, and one is up here and this one fractured the bone,” Ava’s grandmother Robin Moraga-Saldarelli told NBC. “She can hear a little bit out of one ear, and to her, she thought it was a bomb.”

One of the three bullets missed the head of Ava’s cousin Madeline “by about an inch,” the outlet writes.

“I will never forgive him. What he did to me is not OK,” Ava told CBS LA of Cockrell. “No one should have a gun in the mall. … I want to know why they shot me. Why was I the one who got shot?”

Cockrell fled to Nevada, where he was arrested and is currently being held at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas. He faces at least one attempted murder charge.