SAN JUAN – A little 8-year-old girl died of a gunshot to her head while another 14 people suffered multiple bullet wounds in two unrelated incidents during a violent weekend in Puerto Rico.
The death of the 8-year-old, local authorities said Monday in different reports, occurred Sunday night, though the circumstances of the shooting are as yet unknown.
According to the authorities, one or more unknown persons shot at a vehicle carrying the little girl and her parents as they arrived home in the town of Ciales on the north side of the island.
Her father, Jonathan Rosa Quiñones, 27, was shot twice in the buttocks, while her mother, a nurse by profession, was unhurt. They took their daughter to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Jorge Gonzalez, director of the Criminal Investigations Corps, or CIC, or Arecibo, said the fatal bullet hit the left side of the minor’s lower jaw and went out the back of her head.
Gonzalez also said that Rosa Quiñones has no criminal record and is employed by the Morovis Savings and Loan Cooperative, which led the authorities to investigate whether the assailants confused their target, since such violent attacks are usually associated with a settling of scores between criminal gangs
Elsewhere, a teenage girl age 14 who was hit by a bullet was identified as Rolianys Ramos Davila. She was riding in a car with her boyfriend Felix A. Vega, 27, when unknown persons opened fire on them in the Canovanas municipality on the eastern end of the island.
Six people were shot and killed over the weekend on this island of just 3.5 million inhabitants, and according to figures provided by local police, 221 murders have been committed so far this year, 21 more than in the same period in 2015.
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