A four-year-old has been shot.

“Definitely, this is an awful tragedy,” says Clayton County Police Lieutenant Chris Windley.

Investigators are trying to piece together an apparently accidental shooting in a minivan, late Wednesday morning.

A mother and her four young children were traveling in a minivan on Jonesboro Road. The woman tells police she heard a loud “pop” and turned around.

"Her four-year old daughter was slumped over in her car seat with a gunshot wound,” said Windley.

The little girl was airlifted to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston with life-threatening injuries.

Windley says investigators are now trying to figure out where the gun was in the car and who pulled the trigger. Above all, he said, this sad event is further proof that kids and guns can be a tragic combination.