A 13-year-old Alabama boy is dead after he caught gunfire that flew through his window and hit him in the head while he was playing with an iPad in his bedroom.
Kei'lan Allen was sitting in his room in Tuscaloosa around 6:20 pm Friday when the gunshots were fired at his home in Washington Square.
When police arrived, they found Allen with a gunshot to his head.
The shots were fired from outside the home in an apparent drive-by. Around 13 bullets made their way into Kei'lan's bedroom, with even more elsewhere in the house.
'I don't even think he heard the gunshots,' Allen's cousin Casey Prewitt, 26, said, because of the headphones. 'I'm pretty sure it was an AR-pistol that hit his head.'
Officers found so many shell casings in the road on the scene of the crime that they had to pull business cards from their wallets to use as temporary evidence markers.
Allen was declared dead on the scene.
Investigators with the Violent Crimes Unit are working to locate persons of interest in the case.
'It's a senseless murder. We see it all the time where adults are shot and it's terrible. When it's a kid, it takes it to another level,' Tuscaloosa Police Chief Brent Blankley said. 'We're going to do everything we can to make these arrests.'
Allen was described by family as someone who loved learning, as not only was he using his iPad with a beloved pair of red Beats headphones, he had an open dictionary next to him.
'He was a very smart kid,' said Prewitt. 'He probably had over 30 books in his room.'
Kei'lan's mother, Christina Barnes, called for her son repeatedly after the shots rang out. He was Barnes' only son.
'He didn't answer after that, so she walked in the room, and he was slumped over,' Prewitt said. 'She just grabbed him and was telling him, 'I love you. I love you.' An innocent child with a bullet hole in his head. '
The family is reeling from 13-year-old Kei'lan's death.
'It just happened out of nowhere,' Prewitt said. 'It's a tough time and I can't say we're handling it well.'
Prewitt described him as having an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
'He was a phenomenal kid. A straight-A student. Very artistic. He could really draw,' Prewitt said.
'He was very mild mannered – 'yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am,'' he added. 'He kept to himself. He wasn't too much of a talker, he was much of a doer. He just got a lot done.'
Police as of Saturday afternoon had not announced any arrests, nor identified a motive.
