Police hunting for 16-year-old boy after neighbor fatally struck by stray bullet while reading her baby Bible

Authorities have issued a first-degree murder warrant for a 16-year-old Illinois boy accused of firing the stray bullet that killed his neighbor while she was reading her infant a Bible story, authorities said.

The juvenile, who police said is eluding arrest, faces the charge as an adult and a judge set his bail set at $3 million, the Chicago Tribune reported.

As FrontPageDetectives previously reported, on Oct. 17, Melanie Hope Yates, 23, a mother of two girls, was putting her 7-month-old daughter to bed in her Zion home around 9 p.m. when she was struck in the head.

The registered nurse died from her injures the following day.

According to the Tribune, the night of the shooting, the boy exited the home he shared with his mother and began firing a rifle at an individual outside on the street.

Zion police said they have not established who the teenager’s intended target was or a possible motive for the alleged attack.

“You totally transformed the lives of my son-in-law and my granddaughters,” Lam Calderon, the victim’s mother, told WFLD of the then-unknown shooter shortly after Yates’ death. “They will never know their mother again. It’s heartbreaking because she wasn’t out and about, she was in her own home.”

"Solving this case won’t bring her back, but it will lead to closure for us that love Lanie," said the victim’s father, Shawn Calderon.