Boy, 3, killed in U.S. road-rage shooting

Toddler shot by angry motorist in Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A threeyear-old boy on a shopping trip with his grandmother was killed in a road-rage shooting when a driver opened fire on the grandmother’s car because he thought she “wasn’t moving fast enough at a stop sign,” police said.

The shooting occurred just before 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Shackleford Crossings shopping centre near the western edge of Little Rock.

The grandmother and the little boy, whose identities have not been released, were in their car at a stop sign when the other driver, apparently angry about the delay, stepped out of his car and opened fire, police said. The boy was struck by gunfire at least once, they said.

The grandmother, who wasn’t struck, drove away and called police.

The toddler was taken to a hospital, where he died shortly after, becoming the second young child to be shot dead in a road-rage incident in the city in the past few weeks.

Police Lt. Steve McClanahan said investigators believe the boy and his grandmother “were completely innocent” and have no relationship with Saturday’s shooter, who was being sought. He said the grandmother was “driving the car and was taking her grandson shopping.”

Police said they were looking for an older black Chevrolet Impala. Police did not release a detailed description of the man.

Two days before Thanksgiving, a two-year-old was fatally injured in the back seat of her mother’s car in a drive-by shooting four miles east of Saturday’s incident. The shooter in that case hasn’t been captured.

“This is about as frustrated as you can be as a public safety official, or just a plain citizen who’s sitting and watching this tonight, to think that these kind of things are occurring in our city streets,” Police Chief Kenton Buckner told reporters Saturday.

“When it involves children ... You would hope that as a community ... that we’d do everything we can to protect them.”

Buckner said he didn’t know if the children’s shootings were related.

— The Associated Press, with files from The Washington Post