A 5-year-old boy riding his bicycle in front of his home – “where he’s supposed to be, being supervised” – near Detroit’s Fargo-Oakfield Park was struck and wounded by a stray bullet on July 7, 2026, Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison said.
“The good news is, the child is going to be okay,” Bettison said in a recorded video at the scene shared by the department. Bettison said the child’s father heard three gunshots around 8:50 p.m., then saw his son fall off his bicycle. The child was shot in the arm.
It wasn’t a fight or an argument that led to the shooting, Bettison said – it instead appeared to be random shots fired into the air from Fargo-Oakfield Park.
“Which is problematic. When you fire a weapon, what goes up must come down,” he said.
Bettison said his department has identified a person of interest who they believe to be about 15 or 16 years old, wearing a mask, and who is known to frequent the area.
Bettison added that he expects to make an arrest “fairly quickly.”
“I’m very, very confident, or I wouldn’t say it,” he said.
“This is very, very important to me – we’re not going to tolerate this in the city of Detroit.”
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield who weighed in on the shooting relayed a similar message in a statement sent out that same night:
“Every child in Detroit deserves to feel safe riding their bike, playing outside, and simply being a child in their own neighborhood. We cannot accept a reality where our children are placed in harm’s way because someone chose to recklessly fire a gun,” she said.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at asahouri@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 5-year-old boy shot by stray bullet in Detroit while riding his bike
Reporting by Andrea May Sahouri, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Andrea May Sahouri, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
