The toddler was shot at a home on Cypress Gully and Cypress Prairie and the suspected shooter is still on the loose.
There's a bullet hole in the front door of the home, put there early Tuesday morning, fired from a car that witnesses say quickly drove off. The damage, though, extends far beyond property to a three-year-old boy who was standing in the living room. He was staying with extended family members when that bullet struck him in the back.
Sgt. Greg Pinkins with the Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide Unit said, "We're investigating whether it's a random event, or if it was retaliation for some other event."
Neighbors believe it was the second possibility, saying there was a feud between a man who was a frequent visitor at a house across the street and a man who lives in the house where the child was staying. It escalated Monday, and they say it was over a girlfriend.
"There was commotion all day and night," said neighbor Danny Ruiz.
It's a complicated story and neighbor Mariah Sossa says she knows it all too well. She says she also knows who's behind it.
"I saw him drive off in my mom's car," she said. "He was making threatening calls to my mom saying I'm going to go back to the next house and shoot up someone's house tonight.
Sossa believes he carried out that threat and that a three-year-old boy was standing close to the door when the gun was fired. The child was flown to the hospital in critical condition where he underwent surgery. Neighbors are left to ponder the question of why an argument between adults had to involve an innocent child.
"It's a baby, it's a baby," said neighbor D.J. Seymour. "I got a little son on the way, too."
We're told that for now Harris County investigators are not identifying the young victim, nor the suspect. But they have said he was last seen driving off in a white Dodge sedan. We know the little boy underwent surgery just after his arrival at the hospital in critical condition, but there have been no updates on his condition since then.
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