BATON ROUGE - A teenage girl is among the city's latest shooting victims after she was sleeping in her bedroom early Monday morning and was hit by gunfire, according to Baton Rouge Police. She is expected to survive.

It happened in the 1500 block of North 47th street. The latest shooting capped off a violent Labor Day weekend with the deaths of a mother in Tigerland Friday morning. A toddler was gunned down Friday night while riding in a car with her dad on Flannery.

District Attorney Hillar Moore said the homicide rate this year is getting ready to surpass last year's number of 82. Right now, Moore said we are in the high 70's.

"This was just an awful weekend," Moore said. "Each one of the losses that we've had is a community loss and it affects people greatly and our community greatly."

A family member of the 14-year-old who was shot told WBRZ she woke up in the middle of the night after the teen came in her room screaming in pain saying she was injured. The girl was shot while sleeping in her bed. People on the street where it happened said Baton Rouge has turned into a war zone.

"This weekend pushes us closer," Moore said. "We had a high number of homicides per capita, and we have done better and worse in certain years. We need to find a way to do better and keep assessing and looking at the data that drives us."

Moore said many cities around the nation are dealing with higher than usual homicide rates. Those studying the statistics blame the pandemic. Crime typically increases during the summer months, and Moore said many communities have had two summers this year with the lockdown counting as one of them.

He urged the community to work together to help solve some of these crimes. A poignant and heart-wrenching scene at the toddler's shooting is now ingrained in his mind forever.

"Last Friday, I saw young family members following behind the van asking not to take their loved one away," Moore said. "Pretty sad, hits you hard. I've been doing this 44 years. I thought I've seen it all. That was a unique situation for me just to think about how much pain that child had - chasing behind the van - not to take their loved one away."