3-year-old girl dies after being shot at Mount Washington home

PITTSBURGH — A 3-year-old girl died Sunday after suffering a gunshot wound in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighborhood, police said.

According to police, Yasha Ross was shot once at a home along Southern Avenue, but details were not immediately available. Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Sonya Toler said that neither Yasha nor her mother lived at the house.

After Yasha was shot, her mother ran outside, holding her, and was driven by a passerby to Allegheny General Hospital, Toler said. Yasha was pronounced dead after arriving at the hospital about 1 p.m.

Yasha’s grandmother, Nigeria Bates, said her mother recently came to her home in Philadelphia to take her back to Pittsburgh.

"Oh, my grandbaby. She was just the beautiful-est thing. She was like a ray of sunshine," Bates said.

Police are questioning at least two people.

“Once we have a chance to talk to the people who are in the house, we'll have something to say about how things happened,” Toler said.

According to Bates, Yasha’s mother was at the home visiting a new boyfriend. Bates said she was told that her granddaughter got ahold of a gun in an upstairs bedroom.

“(She) might have thought that was a toy and she picked it up, and God knows what happened after that,” Bates said.

Neighbors told Channel 11 News that the incident is shocking.

“I feel so bad for them. I just hope it was an accident,” neighbor Shelley Gould said.

No charges have been filed.

Cox Media Group