Girl, 8, Is Seriously Wounded by Stray Bullet at Disneyland

An 8-year-old girl was hit in the back by an apparent stray bullet Sunday as she rode an open-car train through the Fantasyland section of Disneyland.

Anaheim Police Lt. John Cross said the shot apparently was fired from outside the park about 6 p.m. but there were no reports of shootings in the area.

Nayeli Diane Placentia of Downey was in guarded condition in the pediatrics intensive care unit at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange Sunday night after surgery to remove a bullet from her back.

Cross said the little girl did not realize she had been shot.

“She complained to her parents that something struck her back,” Cross said.

The parents, whose names were not released, took their daughter to Western Medical Center in Anaheim where doctors discovered the bullet wound in her back. Cross said the police were called at 6:43 p.m. by hospital officials.

The girl was transferred to the UCI Medical Center for surgery.

“Apparently, the operation was successful,” Cross said. He added that doctors removed a small-caliber bullet, most likely from a handgun.

Investigators were on the scene in an attempt to discover where the shot might have come from, he said. The girl and her family had been sitting together in one of the open-sided cars with a canvas roof.

I don’t think this was intentional at all,” Cross said. “It probably was someone firing a shot into the air.”

A Disneyland night manager said that park officials ordered him not to discuss the shooting.

Operations at the park, which was open until midnight Sunday, were not affected.

Cross said there were no reports that anyone near the little girl heard shots or knew what had happened.