Parents didn’t report their 10-year-old daughter had been shot for more than five hours because they mistakenly believed the bleeding was her period.

The girl was sleeping in her home in Hayward, California around 2am when a stray bullet from drive-by shooting wounded her in the buttocks, police said.

When the girl woke up in pain and had blood in her underwear, the girl’s 42-year-old father and 43-year-old mother said they found no indication she had been shot.

The girl’s father told local television news channel KPIX 5: ‘I heard shots. I thought they were, I thought they were something else. It sounded like bulbs popping.




‘We don’t call the cops when you hear shots on the streets. I didn’t know it was in front of my house and I didn’t know my daughter was shot.

The hole where the bullet entered the house (Picture: YouTube/ABC News)

The girl’s father said he checked the room for bullet holes and didn’t find any damage.

He told his wife and older daughter to examine the girl when they found blood on her sheets.

The father added: ‘I told them to check her and they said she was on her first period. She’s 10 years old.’

Hayward police Lt Mark Stuart told the San Jose Mercury News the girl’s older sister gave her a sanitary pad and she went back to sleep.

A forensic team examines the point where the bullet entered the house (Picture: YouTube: ABC News)

But when she woke up for school the next morning, she was still in pain and when her parents examined her more closely they noticed the wound on her buttocks.

The girl’s 15-year-old sister called 911 and an ambulance was dispatched around 7:30am, on Friday morning.

Despite nursing a bullet wound for five hours, police say the girl was ‘in good spirits’ when she arrived at hospital.

She went into surgery later on Friday to remove the bullet and was last reported recovering in the hospital.

The shooting took place in Hayward, California (Picture: YouTube/ABC News)

At first, police were suspicious as to why they weren’t called sooner about the shots.

The doctor who examined the girl agreed that the parents could have mistaken the blood for a period since the entry wound was ‘rather small’.

‘The doctor said that if that’s what they were seeing and they never initially saw the entry wound from behind, that it’s plausible to believe it was a period as opposed to being shot,’ said Lt Stuart.

After the evaluation, the police said they would no longer be pursuing child neglect charges.