SALISBURY, N.C. — A rifle seized by deputies was used in the 2016 death of a 7-year-old girl in a Salisbury home, police said Monday.
A’yanna Allen was shot and killed Dec. 4, 2016, as she slept in a bedroom she shared with her grandmother at the their home on Harrel Street, authorities said.
This discovery was made by the Salisbury Police Department and the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office.
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A’yanna died after gunfire riddled a home at around 4 a.m., just hours after a man was shot at a now-closed restaurant. Police said the two shootings are connected, but the only arrest made so far involves a woman charged with obstruction.
The gun was seized in June 2019 when a search warrant was executed at a home on Morgan Road in Gold Hill, North Carolina, sources told Channel 9 on Sept. 28, 2021.
The man who had the rifle is currently in federal custody and awaiting sentencing in the Middle District of North Carolina on gun and drug charges.
He got the gun from someone else within weeks of the search at the home in Gold Hill, sources said.
They are not suspects in A’yanna’s killing.
In March 2021, authorities got information from someone who was being cooperative that the firearm may have been used in the deadly shooting.
The source said they immediately contacted the Salisbury Police Department and made them aware of the discovery and provided it for shell casing analysis.
The test results showed that it was the gun used in her murder.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
(Watch Below: Community comes together for family of child shot, killed)
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