CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 2-year-old boy is dead and his father arrested after a heated domestic dispute early Tuesday morning, police said.

The child's father and a woman got into an argument about 5:30 a.m. near Washington Avenue and West 28th Street, Cleveland police deputy chief Ed Tomba said.

The 23-year-old man walked out of the apartment into a shared space between two buildings in Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Agency's Lakeview Estates. As he was leaving, he turned and fired one shot back into the apartment.

That shot struck the standing 2-year-old, who was taken to Lutheran Hospital where he was pronounced dead, Tomba said.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's online database lists the child as 2-year-old Derrice Alexander Jr.

After firing the shot, the father fled. He ran past a brightly colored playground and down a flight of steps to the back of property. Tomba said he tried to dump his handgun in a Dumpster.

Then he rammed his car through a nearby fence into a stone yard and continued on foot to a water treatment plant on West 49th Street, where officers arrested him.

Tomba described the father as "distraught."

Members of the child's family returned to the apartments from the hospital Tuesday morning and were sobbing.

"That was my cousin's miracle baby," Le'Shelle Dawson said, explaining the child's mother has sickle cell anemia. "She wasn't supposed to survive. She survived because Jesus has her in his arms."

Tomba said domestic violence investigators "have a history at this apartment."

Court records show domestic violence charges against the father were dropped in December. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to felonious assault and attempted felonious assault charges, and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was released a year early, according to court records.