A 9-year-old girl in China's Anhui province was fatally shot in the head on Aug. 14. The girl was playing with her sister on a sweet potato farm in the Yu’an district of Lu’an at the time of the incident.

According to local police, the girl was accidentally shot by a group of three men who were hunting with high-pressure air rifles. The hunters claimed that they mistook the girl as potential prey. The three suspects have been put into criminal detention for involuntary manslaughter, according to an Aug. 17 Weibo post by the police in charge of the case.

“Word has gone all around our village, saying that [the suspects] mistook the girl for a rabbit,” a local villager was quoted as saying by news site thepaper.cn.

The three suspects, all local residents, were riding in a pickup truck when they spotted the girl. They fled after discovering that they had shot a child rather than a wild animal, but eventually turned themselves in to police after a "wanted notice" was issued on Aug. 15.

It is yet to be determined whether they were legally entitled to possess rifles. Personal possession of firearms is usually strictly banned in China.