US man shoots dead own daughter after mistaking her for home intruder
- The girl’s mother called police after the incident, with both parents heard on the call frantically begging their daughter to wake up
- Emergency responders arrived a few minutes later and took her to the local hospital, where she was pronounced dead about an hour later
A man in the US state of Ohio fatally shot his 16-year-old daughter after mistaking her for an intruder breaking into the family home, local police said.
The death of Janae Hairston added to the long list of gun violence victims in the United States this year.
The girl’s mother called emergency services at 4.30am on Wednesday to report that her daughter was lying on the floor of their garage, after being shot by her father who mistook her for an intruder when the security alarm went off, police said.
Both parents could be heard frantically begging their daughter to wake up in the eight-minute call, according to local newspaper The Columbus Dispatch, which obtained a recording of the conversation.
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Emergency responders arrived a few minutes later and transported Hairston to the local hospital, where she was pronounced dead about an hour later at 5.42am.
“We are saddened by this tragic loss and will make every effort to help students and families cope,” said Hairston’s school district, in a note to parents published by local press.
About a kilometre away, three other people – aged six, nine and 22 – were killed on December 7.
The two youngest victims were students in the same school district as Hairston in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio’s capital.
The Columbus Dispatch said 2021 was on track to become one of the deadliest years in the city’s history for shootings and homicides.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, gun violence has risen sharply in the US, where gun rights are a hotly debated issue, but largely protected by the constitution.
According to the site Gun Violence Archive, more than 44,000 people have been killed by guns in the US this year, including suicides, of which 1,517 were minors.
The number of travellers attempting to pass through airport security checkpoints with firearms in 2021 reached its highest point since the Transportation Security Administration began tracking it 20 years ago, the agency said on Wednesday.
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The TSA has stopped travellers carrying more than 5,700 firearms at US airports since the beginning of the year, far surpassing the previous record of 4,432 firearms in 2019, according to TSA spokesperson R. Carter Langston. A final tally will be announced next month.
About 85 per cent of the firearms found this year were loaded, Langston said.
The surge in gun discoveries comes even though travel demand remains about 25 per cent below the pre-pandemic pace of 2019, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
The increase is probably tied to a jump in overall US gun sales since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Langston, who cited a July 2020 report by the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank.
“It’s a trend with guns in America and now we are seeing more guns at airports,” he said.
