9-Year-Old Orange County Girl Shot And Killed, Died In Father's Arms

It was just an ordinary afternoon for Ximena Meza as she was playing with her friends in front of her home in Anaheim, California, when she was shot. Orange County neighbors heard three to four gunshots on Wednesday evening around 7:15pm, that ultimately took the life of the 9-year-old girl. “I saw her dad just yelling, ‘Save my daughter, save my daughter! My daughter’s been hit. Call an ambulance,'” neighbor George Aguirre said. Another neighbor added, "She had got pierced in her right side and her abdomen had been swollen to capacity. I didn’t have a very good pulse, but she had a pulse. She was breathing."

Meza was rushed to UCI Medical Center in neighboring Orange where she was pronounced dead at 7:56pm. "She ran in there and she died in my arms," said father William Meza to KNBC. "We don't have any idea about it. They were just playing right there. We just heard the shots -- three shots. She ran inside the apartment. When I grabbed her she was bleeding from the side." Meza told KCBS, "I just love her, love her so much and I know she is with God right now because she is an angel." He also told the OC Register that his two surviving daughters still don't know about their sister's death. The family had just moved to Anaheim from Chicago about three months ago and Ximena was a couple weeks short of turning 10.

As of now the shooter is still at large and reports say that Ximena Meza was possibly not the intended target. The Anaheim Police Officers Association is offering $5,000 reward for information in this case. "We have very limited information on any type of suspects. All we know is that there were some males involved. Whether that's more than one or six or more, we don't know," Anaheim Police Lt. Bob Dunn said.