Tyler Holder Allegedly Sexually Assaults, Suffocates 6-Year-Old Neighbor; Police Shoot Suspect

Tyler Holder Allegedly Sexually Assaults, Suffocates 6-Year-Old Neighbor; Police Shoot Suspect

SAGINAW, Texas -- Three weeks after a 6-year-old North Texas girl's body was found in a trash bag wrapped in a tarp hours after she had been playing outside, authorities went to her teenage neighbor's house looking to arrest him.

Instead, the 17-year-old suspect was shot after authorities say he opened fire, seriously wounding a police detective.

The attempted arrest was the culmination of weeks of investigation and turmoil in the suburban Fort Worth neighborhood where Alanna Gallagher had lived, and it followed the discovery last week that someone had set fire to a makeshift memorial to the girl and torched a car owned by her family.

Authorities suspect that Tyler Holder sexually assaulted and suffocated his young neighbor, who was found with plastic bags taped around her neck, according to the capital murder arrest warrant affidavit. Holder's DNA matched evidence found on the girl's body and on a belt wrapped around the tarp, according to the affidavit.

Tyler Holder Allegedly Sexually Assaults, Suffocates 6-Year-Old Neighbor; Police Shoot Suspect

Kimberly Holder lives at the home with her son but was not there Tuesday morning, police said. She referred calls to her attorneys. One of them, Lance T. Evans, said in an email to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she was in shock and was worried about her son's condition. Evans declined further comment.

Holder lives two doors down from the house where Alanna lived with her family in a middle-class neighborhood of neat, one-story houses. A neighbor told authorities the girl was last seen by Holder's flower beds, according to the affidavit.

Alanna had been missing for about five hours when her body was discovered by two teenagers on a street about a mile from her house. She had been stuffed in a large trash bag and then wrapped in a silver tarp.

Holder told police that on the day the girl went missing, he had slept until the afternoon, watched television and then looked for a job, but his car had not moved, according to the affidavit. A neighbor reported having seen a silver tarp in Holder's backyard a few months before the girl's death, but police did not find it when they were questioning him, the document says.

The affidavit also says Holder told neighbors that the child found dead July 1 was Alanna before authorities had revealed the victim's identity.

All over the Saginaw neighborhood, purple ribbons and bows – placed in memory of the girl whose favorite color was purple – remain on mailboxes, trees, stop signs and light poles.