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11-year-old boy accused in girl’s death appears in Jefferson County court

An 11-year-old boy in Tennessee shot and killed an 8-year-old girl over an argument about a puppy.

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Mckayla’s mother says her daughter was outside playing, and had refused to let the boy see her puppy. McKayla told the boy “no”, and he shot her, Dyer says.

Sheriff Bud McCoig said that the little girl’s next-door neighbor, a fifth grader at White Pine Elementary School, used his father’s shotgun from inside his house to shoot the girl, who was in third grade at the same school.

Around 7:30 PM on Saturday evening, deputies found Maykayla Dyer on the ground with a gunshot wound to the chest. Maykayla was pronounced dead a short time after the shooting at an area hospital, the New York Daily News reports.

‘No matter how bad of a mood you were in she could always make you smile, ‘ she said. “He was making fun of her, calling her names, just being mean to her”, she says.

Ms Dyer described her daughter as “a precious little girl”. “I need my baby back home”.

But the alleged bullying took a tragic, and fatal, turn.

“The 11-year-old did intentionally shoot the 8-year-old from inside his home”, McCoig said.

The shooting happened in a neighborhood where all the kids knew each other and played together, McCoig says.

The young suspect had a detention hearing scheduled for Monday morning.

The shooter, who has not been identified, was charged with first-degree murder in juvenile court, and a judge could decide to send the case to adult court.

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“With our family we try our best, but when it rain it pours on us”, one grieving family member wrote on Facebook.

McKayla Dyer