Teen Fatally Shot in the Face With Rifle, Police Say

Police tape is shown in a stock photo. (Graeme Roy/The Canadian Press)

A 15-year-old in Texas was killed after being shot in the face with a rifle, and police are searching for a suspect.

According to ABC News, the boy was shot near San Antonio on the morning of Aug. 5. The teen was found with a gunshot wound to the head in Gander Park in Converse.

The male suspect who shot the unnamed victim left the scene and is at large, officials said. The shooter is believed to be an adult, reported KSAT.

The male was described as a friend of the victim’s older brother, Converse Police told ABC.

After he was shot, the teen was taken to San Antonio Military Medical Center in critical condition but later succumbed to his injuries, KSAT reported.

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The names of the victim and suspect were not disclosed.

Officials are investigating and interviewing witnesses.

ABC and KSAT reported that the suspect used an AR-15-style rifle.

A motive in the case has not been identified.

Other details about the shooting are not clear.

More Victims in El Paso

Two more victims of the mass shooting at a crowded Walmart in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend died at a hospital on Monday, raising the death toll for the attack to 22.

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Dr. Stephen Flaherty said at a news conference that gunshot wounds of the patients treated at the Del Sol Medical Center have been “devastating and major.”

He said one patient who died at the hospital had major internal abdominal injuries affecting the liver, kidneys, and intestines. That patient also received a “massive blood transfusion,” Flaherty said.

Law enforcement agents respond to an active shooter at a Wal-Mart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3, 2019. (Joel Angel Juarez/AFP/Getty Images)

The hospital didn’t release the names or ages of the two patients who died Monday, but hospital officials described one as an elderly woman.

Another patient remained in critical condition at the hospital and five others were in stable condition, two days after the Saturday attack in which more than two dozen people were wounded. Victims were also treated at other El Paso hospitals.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

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The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

Law enforcement officers respond to an active shooter situation at a Walmart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas on Aug. 3, 2019. (Joel Angel Juarez/AFP/Getty Images)

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.

Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.