A New Year’s celebration turned deadly in Arlington, Texas as a woman was killed by a gunshot that reportedly came from her boyfriend’s gun.
WFAA reports that the gun went off as the boyfriend was trying to shoot celebration fire into the air.
According to investigators, the woman, identified by Arlington police as Blanca Guerra, was with her boyfriend, Mario Alanis, as he was attempting to shoot his gun to the sky to ring in the New Year in the neighborhood.
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Alanis, 34, allegedly threw his gun to the ground after it didn’t go off. As he was trying to re-load, the gun apparently went off, pointed in the direction of Guerra, 39. KDFW reports that they were in the yard of the residence and the bullet struck her in the head.
Police responded to the incident at 12:25 a.m. to find Guerra’s dead body on the back porch, WFAA reports. Police Lt. Christopher Cook stated that Alanis was not at the scene when authorities arrived. He explained that Guerra’s sister informed authorities that Alanis called her after the incident, telling her that he and Guerra “went in the backyard, they were going to shoot a gun off to celebrate, and the gun accidentally went off and struck my sister.”
“Sounds like they were, again, going to try and celebrate New Year’s somehow with the firearm, and something terrible went wrong,” Cook said.
Later Friday, police confirmed that Alanis was arrested in South Arlington and booked into jail. He is facing manslaughter charges.
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Guerra’s death was one of several shootings reported by WFAA that occurred in Arlington on New Year’s Day. One includes an unnamed woman who was shot in the leg by gunfire, also by her boyfriend. Another incident was the death of a four-year-old boy, Messiah Taplin, who also was allegedly shot in the head via accidental gunfire.
“I don’t ever recall a New Year’s Eve like this,” Cook told the outlet. “You will always run to some fireworks calls. You’ll run to some shots-fired calls. But typically, what we worry about is intoxication manslaughter cases and fatality crashes.”
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