Teenager Accidentally Kills Woman While Playing With Gun in Car: Cops

A teenager accidentally shot a woman dead while playing with a gun outside an Arizona mall, according to police.

Mesa police raced to Superstition Springs Mall on Monday, October 24, following reports of a shooting inside a car.

According to Fox 10, when officers arrived outside the home they found a 20-year-old woman had been struck by a bullet.

The victim was taken to a nearby hospital, but she died as a result of the injuries she had sustained in the shooting.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a database that collects information about shootings from across the U.S., 23 people in Arizona have been fatally shot since October 1. The same database also found that four women had been shot dead in the state since then.

CBS5 reported that the 16-year-old suspect, who hasn't been named, had been playing around with a gun in the backseat of a car with two other occupants.

Police said the victim had been sitting in the front seat at the time of the shooting, although officers didn't comment on the condition of the third person in the vehicle.

The teenager has since been taken into custody, although police haven't shared further information about whether he's been charged.

An investigation into the shooting and the circumstances around it has been launched by Mesa police.

Newsweek has contacted the Mesa Police Department for comment.

Earlier this month, a man allegedly shot his wife dead in front of their crying daughter in Florida.

Oscars Edmundo Marin Martinez, 42, allegedly shot his wife seven times in the head and neck while they were sitting in the front seats of a pickup truck in a parking lot at 12490 Southwest 5th Street.

The shooting happened as their five-year-old daughter was crying in the backseat, according to a police report obtained by NBC 6.

Martinez was arrested and charged with murder and was being held at Broward County Jail, according to NBC 6.

In August a man from Gwinnett County, Georgia, was arrested after he allegedly murdered his wife, who he claimed had committed suicide.

The Gwinnett Police Department previously told Newsweek that officers had responded to a suicide call in Lawrenceville.

Its report added: "On the phone the caller stated his wife had shot herself. When officers arrived, they found the victim deceased with a gunshot wound to the head."