A fourth-grader from Washington County, Pa., was killed early Monday morning from a shot fired inside the apartment where she lived, WPXI reports.
Investigators believe that little Taniyah Thomas was the victim of an attempted home invasion. The shooter allegedly entered the building from a bottom-level door and went upstairs and began firing shots.
The 10-year-old apparently woke up, alarmed by the shots, and was running to her mother's room, where she was shot in the head around 3:50 a.m.
Taniyah reportedly loved cheerleading and was supposed to enter a competition on Tuesday.
"You don't shoot kids. I can see you killing a grown-up or doing something that did something to you. You don't mess with young kids. Why? They never did anything you," Sherman Brown, Taniyah's grandfather, told WPXI. "I just took her last Wednesday to her cheerleading, and she was supposed to go tomorrow to Pittsburgh for a competition. Now she can't go."
Taniyah's mother, her mother's boyfriend and an infant were also in the apartment at the time of the shooting. No one else was injured.
Read more at WPXI.