OSCEOLA, Ark. — A 2-year-old boy has died and two people are in custody following a shooting in Arkansas.
Officers in Osceola told WREG they were called to the 400 block of Buckingham Street just after 10 p.m. Wednesday.
They discovered a child had been shot. He was rushed to the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis where he later died.
Two suspects have been arrested. Authorities did not release any information on the suspects or what charge they are facing.
A neighbor said she cradled the 2-year-old boy in her arms after he’d been accidentally shot in the head.
Gwen Long described her neighborhood on Buckingham Street in Osceola as quiet. But Wednesday night, she woke up to screaming around 10 o’clock.
She tried to help.
“When I got to the door, heard someone saying, ‘Gwen help me.’ It was the dad,” she said. “He had the baby wrapped up. He had his head wrapped up. Both of them was very upset.”
She’s talking about her next-door neighbors, a couple with two kids. They were frantic, trying to help their older child, a 2-year-old.
He’d been shot right by the temple, she said.
Long took the boy from the father and said she did what she could, cradling him in her arms until paramedics arrived.
“Just trying to save the kid,” she said. “That’s what we do. Way I was raised. It’s a community.”
She says once police got there, she heard the child had been injured during an accidental shooting.
That doesn’t match up with the parents Long knows.
“They’re good people,” she said. “He always come and help me get groceries out the car, whatever I need.”
She says police took both parents into custody, leaving neighbors with more questions than answers.
“They didn’t need to have a gun in the house anyway,” one woman said.
“It’s a 2 year old. I know everybody has a day they must go but at the same time, it was a 2 year old,” Long said.
