FLATBUSH — A 3-year-old boy was shot in the head on Saturday morning, and police had a 22-year-old man in custody for the nearly fatal attack, police said.
The child victim, who was reportedly with a babysitter in his family's second-floor apartment on East 21st Street, was shot in the head around 3:30 a.m., after an argument broke out.
The horrific injury happened just months after he was attacked by a pit bull owned by his mother's boyfriend, the NY Daily News reported.
Neighbors gave the newspaper a litany of reasons why the little boy's mother should not have been trusted with the child's custody, including the recent dog bite, her frequent absences, and a tumble he took down the building's stairwell, the paper wrote.
"...they should have taken him away," Jacinth Fleming, a family friend, told the News, speaking about social services. "He's not safe. He (the baby) has overcome a lot. Everybody's been saying her ass needs to be punished."
The boy was rushed to Kings County Hospital in critical condition, but was later transferred and in critical but stable at Weill-Cornell Medical Center late Saturday morning, police said.
The NYPD did not immediately if the man in custody was related to the little boy, police said.
An investigation was ongoing.
