Authorities have identified a man who was struck three times in a drive-by shooting Monday night in Little Rock and said it happened while the victim was driving a car in which a woman and a 12-year-old girl were passengers.
Officers were sent shortly before 5 p.m. to Arkansas Children's Hospital in response to a report about a person injured in a shooting, according to a police report.
At the hospital, officers found Brandon White, 35, of North Little Rock suffering from gunshot wounds in the left side of his chest, his left elbow and his left leg, according to a police report.
A 30-year-old North Little Rock woman at the hospital told police she and a 12-year-old girl were riding with White in her black 2001 Lexus GS near Wright Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Little Rock on Monday.
The woman was in the front passenger seat and heard gunshots, she told police. She said she watched White duck and throw himself into the back of the vehicle, according to the report.
The woman said she then jumped behind the wheel and drove White to the hospital, the report said.
The girl, who was sitting in the back seat, told police she saw a gunman firing from the front passenger seat of a black mid-2000s Honda Accord. The girl did not get a good look at the shooter, the report said.
Several bullets pierced the front and back driver's-side doors of the Lexus. No suspect was named in the police report.
Last year, Little Rock police responded to two shootings in which children riding in vehicles were killed in shootings. Toddler Ramiya Reed was shot and killed Nov. 22 while riding in the back of a vehicle with her mother. Deshaun Rushing and Larry Jackson were arrested in May on capital-murder charges in that case.
On Dec. 17, Acen King, 3, was fatally shot in the back seat of a Dodge Charger being driven by his grandmother. Gary Holmes was charged in the death, which was described by police as a "road rage" killing.
More recently, a 7-year-old boy was wounded in a drive-by shooting June 27. The boy was not the intended target, police said. Three people were arrested in that case.
It wasn't clear how close the bullets in the Monday night shooting came to hitting the 12-year-old girl. Neither she nor the woman in the car were injured.
"You don't want anybody getting shot, but you don't want want people who aren't the intended target getting hit, especially when it's a child," Little Rock spokesman officer Steve Moore said, adding later: "[The 12-year-old] happened to be in that car. I don't know if the people shooting would have cared one way or another."
Metro on 07/19/2017