A 15-year-old girl was found shot to death in an apartment in Lowell, Massachusetts, on Friday night.
According to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, one of the girl’s family members called 911 after finding the body in the apartment on Lawrence Street, WBTS reported.
Police Superintendent Greg Hudon said officers found multiple shell casings on the scene.
The victim’s family identified her as Ahliana Dickey.
“She’s my oldest granddaughter, and I don’t know how we’re going to go on without her,” Tracy Smith told WCVB. “She was a child.”
Another family member told WBTS that she went to the girl’s school Friday morning to attend her eight grade graduation, but she didn’t show up.
A man who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years told the station police were in the neighborhood Thursday night and that his son thought he heard gunshots.
“He said, ‘I think I just heard gunshots.’ And I said ‘No, not around here. That doesn’t happen around here.’ And he said, ‘No it was pop pop pop pop,’ and I said, ‘I don’t think so,’” the man said. “And then maybe 10 minutes or so after somebody else must’ve called because I didn’t think it was gunshots.”
Investigators have not said if they think the gunshots heard Thursday night might be connected, but they are investigating Dickey’s death as a homicide. They have also not said if the girl lived in the apartment or who else might have lived there.
Interviews with family members conducted by the Boston Herald indicated her father and stepmother did not live at the apartment. Her father, Scott Dickey, said he asked an aunt to go check on her when she didn’t appear in school on Friday. The aunt found the body.
No arrests have been made, but the family said there police are looking for a specific person in connection with the murder.
