Shocking day of gun violence in Washington DC sees a toddler shot dead and a teenager grazed by bullet at school

A grim message was sent from the nation’s capital this week after two children were either injured or killed by stray bullets: no one is safe from gun violence.

Nowhere is safe, either.

A toddler was in a car when she was hit by a bullet, and just hours earlier a teenager was in a high school classroom when she was struck.

Three-year-old Ty’ah Settles became Washington DC’s youngest homicide victim of the year on Friday.

The toddler was riding in an SUV around 9pm when she was struck, caught in an “exchange of gunfire” on Hartford Street SE in the Garfield Heights neighborhood, police said.

She was airlifted to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.

“She didn’t deserve this,” Bernard Brown, Settles’ godfather, told WUSA9. “I would rather it be me than her.”

“She brightened a room,” Darnisha Pelzer, Settles’ mother, told the Washington Post. “Everyone loved her.”

The little girl may not have been the “intended target,” as police said, but Settles’ death underscores the gravity of the gun violence epidemic. And the senselessness of it.

“Anytime a baby gets shot, man, somebody needs to be brought to justice,” DC council member Trayon White Sr told the Washington Post.

A police official echoed this sentiment. “This is an absolute tragedy. It’s unacceptable. A three-year-old little girl lost her life today,” Metropolitan Police Department Commander LaShay Makal said at a press conference on Friday.

So far in 2024, 58 people have died by homicide in DC.

The homicide rate in the city is down by 25 per cent year, compared to the same time period in 2023, which was the deadliest year in two decades, data shows. Over 90 per cent of the killings in 2023 were by gunfire, the Post reported.

Last year, 106 young people under 18 were shot — 16 were shot fatally — the Washington Post reported, by bullets.