Woman mistakenly shoots her daughter dead

Speaking with Police who responded at her home after the incident, the mother told police she heard footsteps approaching quickly so she fired a single shot. She then discovered that the person she had mistaken for an intruder was actually 27-old daughter. The daughter was taken to a hospital where she died.

Sergeant Denise Roberts, of the St Cloud police, was however forthcoming as regards the circumstances surrounding the incident. According to the officer, the mother had been asleep when she heard someone enter her home late on Tuesday.

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She went further to state that while detectives are still very much investigating the case, so far the mother's story matches the evidence.

This particular event comes very quick on the back of a new report which confirmed that violence in America never takes a holiday.

Twenty-seven people were killed and 63 injured in shooting incidents on Christmas Day, according to the Gun Violence Archive. And this tally does not even include people who committed suicide by shooting themselves.

The number of Americans killed in gun homicides on Christmas Day is comparable to the number of people killed in gun homicides in an entire year in places like Australia or Britain, and equal to the total number of people killed in gun homicides in an entire year in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Estonia, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Iceland, combined.

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The dead included the parents of a young child who were shot during a robbery in Columbus, Ohio; a Texas grandfather, whose 73-year-old wife says she shot him for "continuous marital issues and infidelities"; a young couple killed in their vehicle in the early morning hours near Augusta, Maine; and the owner of a barbershop in Alabama who was known as "a strong voice against crime" in the community, according to news reports.

At least two of the Christmas Day shootings qualified as mass shooting incidents with four or more people shot. In one, a two-year-old girl and three teenagers were injured in a shooting in a high-crime neighbourhood in Jacksonville, Florida. Later that night in Mobile, Alabama, four teenagers were shot by two gunmen outside a movie theatre.

So far this year, the US has had an average of about 36 gun fatalities and 73 gun injuries each day, according to the Gun Violence Archive. So the Christmas Day tally represents something of a temporary de-escalation in the violence, but not a huge one.