Accidents with dramatic consequences and acts of violence have occurred in several places in the United States between the last hours of 2020 and the first hours of 2021, just at the end of a year in which
several cities have registered records of violent events
.
A four-year-old boy, identified as Messiah Taplin, died after being hit by at least one bullet in Arlington, Texas, shortly after 12 a.m. Friday, according to city police.
Zantyler Foster-Hook, a 21-year-old man,
was arrested on one count of wrongful death
in connection with this incident.
[A wave of shootings in the main cities of the country leaves dozens of victims]
Arlington police said in a statement that officers went to an apartment block after being alerted that there had been gunfire in the area.
Upon arrival, they noticed a
trail of blood coming from one of the apartments
.
There was no one there, but later they found that a child had been transferred to a hospital located about ten miles away, where he died, adds the investigators' note.
Later, they located four adults who admitted that they had been in the house celebrating.
Foster-Hook told officers he was dancing with a pistol in his hand when a bullet accidentally came out of it,
fatally hitting the boy
, according to court documents consulted by The Dallas Morning News.
The investigation into these events is ongoing, according to the police.
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"I don't remember another New Year's Eve like this"
In Arlington itself, Blanca Guerra, a 39-year-old woman, was also killed by an apparently accidental gunshot in the first minutes of 2021.
The first information available on this event indicates that her boyfriend, Mario Alanis, 34, had a pistol with which he
tried to shoot upwards to celebrate the New Year
.
The deadly bullet that hit Guerra allegedly came out of that weapon by mistake.
Alanis was arrested.
[Shootings leave three children dead in Chicago and at least three more dead in New York]
Beyond these two tragic episodes, New Year's Eve has been a busy one for the Arlington police.
"I don't remember another New Year's Eve like this one," Lieutenant Christopher Cook told the local network WFAA, adding that there were several shootings due to people who used weapons to celebrate the occurrence.
"
Never, to my knowledge, have we dealt with so many shootings,
and certainly of this magnitude, in such a short time," Cook added.
Record rates of violence in Chicago, New York and other cities
Several other cities in the country have recorded multiple violent episodes on New Year's Eve.
In Houston, Texas, for example, an eight-year-old boy was injured by an accidental bullet, according to KPRC-TV, a local station affiliated with our sister network NBC News.
A 24-year-old girl also suffered serious firearm injuries, hit by bullets when her 70-year-old grandfather fired a pistol to celebrate, according to the same media.
The police investigate a violent incident in New York.
AP
Houston closed the year with more than 400 homicides in 12 months, a negative record
not seen since the 1980s
.
It's not the only one.
New York City, for example, ended 2020 with the highest number of violent deaths recorded in nearly a decade, according to The New York Times.
There were several shootings also at night between December 31 and January 1, according to local media.
A young man was shot to death in the early morning, just one day before his 21st birthday, NBC New York reported.
Another city hit hard by violence this year was
Chicago, Illinois, which saw a notable increase in homicides in 2020
after three consecutive years of declines in violence, according to official data released Friday.
["We thought there was a war": A shooting leaves at least 15 wounded outside a funeral home in Chicago]
In the last 12 months, there were 769 homicides, compared with 495 in 2019. To this must be added the 4,033 gunshot wounds in shootings carried out mainly by gang members (2,598 in 2019).
For the police superintendent, David Brown, in 2020 there was a
"perfect storm" of factors
that led to the peak of violence, and among the reasons he highlighted the "profound impact" caused by the coronavirus pandemic on the behavior of the population.
In
Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
and also smaller cities like
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
, are other cities that have experienced not only by the deadly 2020 pandemic, but also because armed violence is increasing.
With information from Telemundo Dallas, The Dallas Morning News, WFAA, KPRC-TV, NBC New York, AP, EFE, The New York Times.