Milwaukee Infant Killed After Weekend Shooting

A 13-month-old boy was shot and killed after bullets were fired at a Milwaukee home this weekend.

Milwaukee police said that dozens of gunshots were fired at the home of the Thao family on the city’s northwest side on Saturday night. One of the bullets struck Bill Thao as he was in the front room of the first floor of the two-story duplex. The infant died a short time later at a local hospital.

The boy has become the state’s youngest gun-related homicide victim of the year.

Police say they don’t think the Thaos family were the intended target of the shooting. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said he isn’t sure why guns were fired at the home.

“I don’t know if the shooters are stupid, I don’t know if they were on drugs, I don’t know if they had the wrong house, but as far as we can tell, the people in this house had nothing to do with those shots being fired,” Barrett said.

The shooting is the third gun-related homicide in the last seven months in Milwaukee in which the victim was 10 years old or younger. Laylah Peterson, 5, was shot to death last month. Sierra Guyton, 10, was shot in May and died in July.

Gun-related deaths of children in Milwaukee are down slightly from last year, but non-fatal shootings of children are up by about a dozen compared to 2013.