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(HOUSTON) — A 5-year-old boy is fighting for his life Sunday after being shot by an 8-year-old family friend inside a Houston home, police said.

Three people were detained for questioning following the shooting Saturday afternoon in the Trinity/Houston Gardens neighborhood in east Houston, police said.

Commander Jonathan Halliday of the Houston Police Department said at least one adult was present when the shooting occurred. Halliday said it was not immediately clear how the older boy got his hands on the gun.

Police officers went to the home around 12:30 p.m. Saturday after someone at the residence reported a shooting had just occurred there, Halliday said during a news conference.

“When they arrived, they learned that a 5-year-old had been shot one time reportedly by an 8-year-old,” Halliday said.

Before officers reached the home, the wounded child was taken by his father to Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston, Halliday said. The boy was later flown by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, Halliday said.

Halliday said the police department’s major assaults unit is investigating the shooting. He said no one has been arrested.

“We know that one adult was inside the house, but we’re not sure the total number of people,” Halliday said.

He said one of the children involved in the shooting was visiting residence when the incident occurred, adding, “they’re all family friends.”

He said the older boy who purportedly fired the gun suffered a laceration to his head following the shooting, but it was not clear how he was injured.

The shooting came a little over a month after an 8-year-old boy in a suburb of Houston was accidentally shot and killed by his 10-year-old brother, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities said the older boy was playing with a shotgun that went off inside their apartment, fatally striking the younger child in the torso.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, at least 299 children 11 years old or younger have been killed in shootings this year and another 648 have been injured.

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(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Four people, including two juveniles, were found dead in a Kentucky home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

Louisville officers responded around 8:45 a.m. local time Saturday to a call of a shooting “with multiple victims” at the home on the 4500 block of East Pages Lane, the Louisville Police Department said.

A man, woman and two juvenile females were found dead from apparent gunshot wounds inside the home, police said.

“Upon further investigation, it appears the adult male shot the adult female and the two juvenile females and then himself,” police said.

The victims and the shooter were related, according to police.

No further information has been released at this time.

The incident is under investigation by the police department’s homicide division.

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(BOYD, Texas) — A FedEx driver confessed to abducting and killing 7-year-old Athena Strand after he delivered a package to her family’s home, Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said at a press conference Friday night.

Police found Strand’s body southeast of Boyd, Texas. Digital evidence and interviews lead investigators to believe that Strand died within an hour of her abduction, according to Akin.

The driver, 31-year-old Taner Lynn Horner, is in jail and is being charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. Horner, who is a resident of Lake Worth, is being held on a $1.5 million bond, according to Akin.

“The answers were not the answers that we would have hoped that we would have gotten. And we want to send our condolences out to the family of Athena Strand,” Akin said.

MORE: Takeoff murder suspect charged following fatal shooting of Migos rapper
Early on in their investigation, law enforcement officers knew that there was a FedEx delivery made at the same time Strand went missing, Akin said.

Horner, who was working as a contract FedEx driver, was not related to the family and did not know the family, Akin said.

Akin said law enforcement were able to get a confession from Horner, saying this has been one of the “toughest” investigations he has ever been involved in.

“Any time there’s a child that dies, it just hits you in your heart. You compare that child to your own children when they were at that age.” 

Law enforcement officials said they were able to locate and find Horner through digital evidence and by partnering with FedEx.

Officials said they are unaware if Horner has a prior criminal history. The investigation is ongoing.

In a statement, FedEx expressed their condolences for Strand’s killing.

“Words cannot describe our shock and sorrow at the reports surrounding this tragic event. First and foremost, our thoughts are with the family during this most difficult time, and we continue to cooperate fully with the investigating authorities. At this time, any further questions should be directed to law enforcement,” FedEx said in a statement to ABC News.

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(HOUSTON) — A suspect has been arrested and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Migos rapper Takeoff, Houston police said Friday.

Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, was arrested Thursday evening in Houston and “charged with the murder of Takeoff,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said during a press briefing.

Takeoff, whose real name is Kirshnik Khari Ball, was shot and killed outside the 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 1 following a private event, police said. He was 28.

A 23-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman also suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the shooting, police said.

Police said at the time that an argument between some of the party guests “led to multiple unknown males firing pistols at each other.”

There was a “lucrative dice game” during the event, followed by an argument outside the venue, Houston Police Sgt. Michael Burrow said during the briefing.

“I can tell you Takeoff was not involved in playing the dice game, he was not involved in the argument that happened outside, he was not armed,” Burrow said. “He was an innocent bystander.”

Investigators were able to determine that Clark was the alleged shooter of Takeoff through shooting reconstruction and ballistics evidence, Burrow said. Police have also obtained cellphone and surveillance footage that has “surfaced over time,” he said.

Police have urged the public to come forward with tips in the days and weeks since.

Around 30 people were at the scene went the shooting happened, and police are still looking to speak with those who were there, Burrow said.

“Literally every one of those people left the scene without leaving a statement,” Burrow said. “It’s important that those people come forward.”

Amid the investigation into the shooting, a man was recently charged with two counts of felon in possession of a weapon for allegedly having a gun at the time Takeoff was fatally shot, ABC Houston station KTRK reported.

Takeoff was part of the Grammy-nominated hip-hop trio Migos, which formed in 2008 in suburban Atlanta and gained mainstream recognition and rose to stardom in 2013 with their song “Versace.” His uncle Quavo, who was present when the shooting took place but unharmed, and his cousin Offset were also part of the trio.

ABC News’ Deena Zaru contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Thursday pressed attorneys for Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis to explain why the governor’s recent suspension of a state prosecutor he viewed as “woke” wasn’t an unlawful and politically motivated overreach of executive authority.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said he would rule in the coming weeks on whether the governor was within his rights to suspend Andrew Warren, a Democrat who was reelected last year as the top state prosecutor in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County after running on a platform of criminal justice reform.

“This whole thing is chock-full of animus toward [reform-minded] prosecutors,” Hinkle said on the last day of a three-day trial in Tallahassee. “Florida law does not allow a governor to remove a state attorney because the governor disagrees with a state attorney’s general approach.”

But attorneys for DeSantis insisted in court that was not why the governor suspended Warren, who was first elected to his position in 2016.

“We have someone here who was not going to enforce the law, based on his own statements,” DeSantis attorney George Levesque told the judge.

According to the executive order suspending Warren in August, the state attorney demonstrated “incompetence and willful defiance of his duties” by implementing certain “policies of presumptive non-enforcement” and by co-signing a left-leaning advocacy group’s public statements about state laws criminalizing gender-affirming care and abortions.

“[We] commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions,” said a statement signed by more than 80 local, elected prosecutors from around the country on June 24, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, leaving the question of abortion rights to the states.

After his suspension, Warren filed a federal lawsuit in August, asking a judge to have him reinstated as state attorney. Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, is deciding the case without a jury.

During trial this week, Hinkle said the outcome of the case hinges on the “real reason” for Warren’s suspension: Was it about Warren’s conduct — a lawful basis — or was it really about his speech, which would violate Warren’s First Amendment rights?

Hinkle suggested the curated text of the executive order alone may not “tell the whole story” of what truly motivated Warren’s suspension.

An attorney for Warren, David O’Neil, told Hinkle that Warren’s suspension was a “political hit job,” targeting his rights to free speech.

“Mr. Warren was suspended from his office because of what he said and what he believed,” O’Neil said.

The statements Warren signed — which were also supported by dozens of prosecutors from other parts of the country — were “purely symbolic, purely an expression of values,” O’Neil said.

According to three days of witness testimony, DeSantis’ so-called “public safety czar,” Larry Keefe, asked people he knew in the law enforcement community if there were any state prosecutors refusing to enforce the law.

“All roads were leading to Mr. Warren,” Keefe testified.

A Republican sheriff in Warren’s own county even sent Keefe a packet flagging two of Warren’s policies that he found worrisome, including one policy — issued in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — telling prosecutors to only bring low-level charges like trespassing or public intoxication under certain circumstances.

In testimony, Keefe conceded that, of those whose party affiliations he knew, all but one of the people he spoke with early on about Warren were Republican.

Then, months later, as the Supreme Court was overturning Roe v. Wade, Warren signed the abortion-related statement from the group Fair and Just Prosecution.

In pressing DeSantis’ attorneys, Hinkle said “a possible view of the facts” is that DeSantis was “genuinely opposed” to “more lenient,” liberal-minded prosecutors, and “it would be good politics to take one down,” so he mentioned that to Keefe, who went “out looking for” them.

“He finds one,” Hinkle said. “He conducts a very one-sided inquiry … [and then] incidentally, he finds the abortion statement. Bingo.”

But at least one senior lawyer in DeSantis’ office who helped formulate Warren’s suspension testified that the abortion-related statement and the other Fair and Just Prosecution statement relating to transgender issues, would not by themselves have led him to recommend Warren’s suspension.

A key point of contention throughout the trial was whether Warren’s signature — and official title — on the Fair and Just Prosecution statements amounted to official policy.

Signing the abortion-related statement “was an announcement we were not going to prosecute cases under the law,” and it told prosecutors in Hillsborough County “what Mr. Warren wanted from them,” Warren’s former chief of staff, Gary Weisman, testified in court.

The top lawyer in the governor’s office, general counsel Ryan Newman, agreed, saying any “reasonable person” would view the statements Warren signed as “a pledge,” making Warren’s suspension not only warranted but lawful under Florida state law.

Warren himself disputed that the statements reflected any type of policy or pledge, testifying that he signed them because he “agreed with the general idea” behind them.

To emphasize that point, O’Neil noted that Warren never disseminated the statements he signed — as he would with an official policy — and that the statements never impacted “a single” case because no abortion-related case was ever referred to Warren’s office for prosecution, and the state of Florida doesn’t even have a law relating to gender-affirming health care.

When DeSantis announced Warren’s suspension in August, he accused Warren of promoting an agenda that is “basically ‘woke,'” elevating his “own personal conception of, quote, ‘social justice’ over what the law requires of you.”

During his testimony this week, Warren defended his time in office, saying the policies he implemented were about efficiency and “fairness” in the criminal justice system, and about trying “to steer low-level offenders away from the downward spiral of the system.”

Warren’s attorney told the judge that upholding Warren’s suspension would have a “chilling” effect on the free speech of other elected officials.

“What other state attorney is going to speak out on policy issues the defendant disagrees with?” he asked.

Prosecutors, however, said Warren’s actions made him unlike other elected prosecutors in Florida.

“It’s not as though every [reform-minded] attorney is somehow on the chopping block,” Newman said.

DeSantis declined to testify in his own defense, which Hinkle said left “a massive hole in the center of [the governor’s] case.”

The judge also expressed concern that no one affiliated with DeSantis contacted Warren or any of his staffers to inquire about his office’s practices and policies.

“You do understand he’s not getting paid — they’ve taken his job,” the judge told Newman while he was on the stand. “Didn’t you think you owed [Warren] any due process before you suspended him for months?… At least pick up the phone and call him?”

Nevertheless, Hinkle made clear that — even if he’s critical of how it transpired — he hasn’t decided whether the suspension was unlawful.

“I don’t know who’s going to win,” the judge said.

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