A 10-year-old girl said that she survived the massacre of her family by playing dead as a gunman lined them up and shot and killed them, according to authorities. The harrowing incident unfolded Wednesday in Houston.

The family told WTRK-TV that the child saw her mother, father, and her 6-year-old sister be shot and killed, and then she waited until the assailant left so she could call her grandmother. The child called her grandmother through the FaceTime video app.

“She said, ‘Granny, someone came in and shot me, my mom, my dad, and my sister, and they dead,” said Angela Ervin to WTRK. The family said that the girl told them a masked man knocked their door and grabbed her 1-year-old baby brother out of the arms of her father. He tossed him onto the couch and then began shooting them. The girl suffered a gunshot injury to the arm, but pretended that she had been killed.


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After the man left, the girl said she locked the door, grabbed her surviving brother, and called her grandmother. Police are looking for a suspect they describe only as a black man in his 20s. The authorities believe the man knew the victims and said that there was no evidence that the incident was a robbery. “This was probably not a home invasion … there was no damage. There was possibly a known disturbance of some sort,” Assistant Chief Patricia Cantu said.

“But right now, we don’t have all the details, and right now, we’re just looking for a suspect to see what happened,” she added. The couple had four children. An 8-year-old boy was not with them at the time of the shooting. The family said they have no idea who could have done this. The couple just moved to the apartment from Spring a couple of months ago, WTRK reported. READ MORE