911 call reveals horrific moment toddler found shot in backseat
The manhunt for the gunman who fatally shot a 3-year-old child in a Little Rock road-rage tragedy stretched to a fifth day Wednesday with no arrest or suspect in the case.
Acen King was shot Saturday while sitting in the backseat of his grandmother's 2006 Dodge Charger following a brief altercation at a stop sign. Kim King-Macon, 47, told police she quickly drove away, not realizing her grandson had been shot. The horror was revealed when she arrived at a shopping mall 10 miles from the scene.
A 911 recording, released Tuesday, reflects the chaos and panic.
"A woman is saying this little kid's been shot," a female caller in the mall parking lot tells the dispatcher. "She says she was getting him out of the car, and that is when she realized he was shot."
A distraught King-Macon can be heard screaming in the background, "Acen has been shot! Oh my God!"
The dispatcher wants to know who did it, but King-Macon says she doesn't know.
"I was at a stop sign and the guy blew a horn at me and I blew it back," King-Macon wails. "He shot but I thought he shot in the air. He shot at the car!"
Acen was rushed to a hospital where he died a short time later. No one else was wounded.
King-Macon told police she had stopped at a stop sign when a man in a black Chevrolet Impala apparently became angry with her. She said the man got out of his car and fired one shot. She quickly drove off.
A $40,000 reward is being offered for information leading to a conviction in the case. The FBI joined the investigation Monday.
The shooting marked the second time in less than a month that a child was fatally shot while riding in a vehicle in the city. A 2-year-old girl riding in the backseat of a car Nov. 22 was the victim of some type of drive-by shooting, police Chief Kenton Buckner said.
"That is very, very frustrating to our police agency as it should be to our community," Buckner said. “We cannot have a community where the least protected among us, being infants, are dying (in) senseless crimes.”
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said such cases reaffirm his support for the death penalty.
“Is there something I should be doing as governor whenever you see a 3-year-old toddler shot?” he told the Associated Press. “People have to be accountable for the most egregious violent crimes in our society.”