White Pine, Tennessee (CNN) As a Tennessee community prepares to bury a girl allegedly killed by an 11-year-old boy over a puppy, more details emerged about the gun used in the shooting. 
 
 The preteen faces first-degree murder charges in the death of MaKayla "BooBah" Dyer, 8. 
 
 He fired at her from his house Saturday, killing the girl who was in her yard, Jefferson County Sheriff Bud McCoig told The Washington Post. 
 
 Where did he get a gun? 
 
 The boy used his father's 12-gauge shotgun, which he got from an unlocked closet, the sheriff told the paper. 
 
 He is being held on a first-degree murder charge in a juvenile detention center. The center's superintendent, Richard Bean, said the boy is the youngest held there on a murder charge in his 44-year career. Bean described him as "very tiny," weighing about 55 pounds. 
 
 He is in a regular "pod" that holds up to 16 other juveniles between ages 12 and 17. 
 
 'Most pitiful case' 
 
 The incident started when the boy asked to see the girl's puppy, McCoig said. 
 
 When she said no, the boy got a gun and shot her dead Saturday, according to the sheriff. 
 
 The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office will determine whether the boy should be tried as an adult. 
 
 He is being detained until a hearing on October 28, his public defender, Edward Miller, told CNN affiliate WATE . He declined to comment further. 
 
 "It is the most pitiful case on both sides," Bean said. 
 
 Heart melting moment of the day-McKayla's puppy waiting for her on the front porch of her home #WATE pic.twitter.com/6Oc3F5cuMl — Mona Nair (@monanair) October 5, 2015 
 
 'I want her back home' 
 
 MaKayla died three weeks after her 8th birthday. 
 
 Her mother, Latasha Dyer, choked back tears as she talked about her daughter. 
 
 "I want her back home, I want her back in my arms," she said. "This is not fair." 
 
 Her death has rattled the small town of White Pine, which is 40 miles east of Knoxville. 
 
 "She was a lovable, little, adorable and typical 8-year old girl that enjoyed life and loved everybody," great-uncle Kenneth Norton told CNN. " She didn't know (any) strangers ... and anytime that you were doing anything ... she wanted to be a part of it." 
 
 She will be buried Thursday at 2 p.m. in Luttrell, Tennessee. ||||| Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.Please install Adobe Flash ™ and try again. Alternatively upgrade to a modern browser. 
 
 A Tennessee mother has paid tribute to her eight-year-old daughter after she was shot dead, allegedly by her 11-year-old neighbor. 
 
 
 
 “She was a precious little girl, she was a mommy’s girl, no matter how bad of a mood you were in she could always make you smile,” Makayla Dyer’s mother, Latasha Dyer, told local TV station WATE, speaking with difficulty through tears. 
 
 “I want her back in my arms. This is not fair. Hold and kiss your babies every night – you’re never promised the next day with them,” Dyer said. “I hope the little boy learned his lesson because he took my baby’s life and I can’t get her back.” 
 
 According to police in White Pine, a rural town in the American south, the two children were playing in the mobile home park where they lived when the boy asked to see puppies that belonged to the girl’s family. When the girl said no, the boy shot her in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun from his mobile home window. 
 
 “When we first moved to White Pine, the little boy was bullying Makayla,” Dyer told WATE. “He was making fun of her, calling her names, just being mean to her. I had to go the principal about him and he quit for a while and then all of a sudden yesterday he shot her.” 
 
 The boy – who has not been named because of his age – has been charged with first-degree murder as a juvenile, and court proceedings are likely to be confidential because of his age. The boy’s family have not spoken to the media since the incident. Child welfare officials are now investigating the boy’s family. He lived with five other children, according to Sheriff GW “Bud” McCoig of Jefferson County. 
 
 The shooting took place just after 7pm on Saturday, when the boy used his father’s shotgun to shoot the girl in the chest from his mobile home park window, officials said. 
 
 “We was in the house watching the Tennessee [football] game and heard the bang,” Chasity Arwood, manager for the mobile home park, told Knoxville News Sentinel. “[We] came out, the family was running to our porch yelling ‘He shot my baby, he shot my baby’.” 
 
 Arwood apparently had to hold Dyer back as she attempted to reach for her daughter after she was shot. 
 
 White Pine, Tennessee 
 
 “My husband had to guard the little girl until the rescue people got here,” Arwood told the Sentinel. “I was holding the family back trying to tell them ‘You can’t touch her, you can’t touch her’. 
 
 “Having to keep a momma away from her baby, being a momma, is really hard. That is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” 
 
 When the boy’s mother heard what happened, Arwood said, “she slammed the door, locked it, and we never seen her after that”. 
 
 When the boy’s mother refused to come out, a distraught Latasha Dyer broke her neighbor’s window. Arwood said she gave Dyer a towel to soak up the blood on her hands, and a blanket to keep warm. 
 
 The shooting shook the eastern Tennessee county of 52,000, nestled along the Cherokee national forest on the western edge of North Carolina. Sheriff McCoig, whose office is investigating the incident, could barely contain his grief at a press conference where he informed reporters of the shooting. 
 
 “Well, by the grace of God,” McCoig said before he stopped, shook his head, looked up and started again. “There’s a loss [of] an eight-year-old child, and our department is hurting, and emergency personnel that responded is hurting, but we all have to pick up and be there for each other.” 
 
 He said local chaplains and pastors had come to the mobile home park that evening, “and they help us bear the hardship of the loss of a little child”. 
 
 White Pine elementary, the school of 850 that both children attended (the girl in third grade, the boy in fifth) pulled grief counselors in from neighboring schools to speak with mourning parents, students and staff. 
 
 “We got together as a staff yesterday and had our emotional time with each other to try to prepare for today,” the school’s principal, Bill Walker, told reporters. “I don’t think you can prepare for when you walk in and see students that are hurting, and [the staff has] done a very good job with keeping those in check and watching over students.” 
 
 At the mobile home park, an impromptu memorial for Makayla has grown up on the girl’s porch, with balloons, a candle wrapped with a picture of Jesus and a wreath of silk flowers, WATE reported. Neighbors have covered with hay a white, spray-painted patch of grass marking where Dyer died. Arwood is looking after the girl’s two puppies. 
 
 “They’ve been running to the porch they know is their home,” she told WATE. 
 
 Gun rights are a polarizing and seemingly intractable issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the country’s constitution. Just two days before the eight-year-old was shot in Tennessee, 10 people were killed and seven injured in at a mass shooting 2,600 miles away in Umpqua community college in Roseburg, Oregon. 
 
 The girl’s funeral is scheduled for Wednesday, local television station WBIR reported. ||||| An argument between two children over puppies turned tragic Saturday when an 11-year-old boy allegedly killed his 8-year-old neighbor with a shotgun, according to authorities in Jefferson County, Tenn. 
 
 The 11-year-old has been charged with first-degree murder in the girl’s death, Jefferson County Sheriff Bud McCoig told The Washington Post. Authorities aren’t releasing the names of either child, but Latasha Dyer told ABC affiliate WATE that her daughter, MaKayla, was killed. 
 
 “She was a precious little girl,” Dyer said through tears in an on-air interview with WATE. “She was a mommy’s girl. No matter how bad of a mood you were in, she could always make you smile.” 
 
 Each of the children had a puppy, the sheriff said. The 11-year-old “wanted to see the 8-year-old’s, and she said no, and then he went and retrieved a gun,” McCoig said. 
 
 The boy fired the 12-gauge shotgun from inside his house, striking the girl as she stood in her yard, the sheriff said. The gun, which was stored in a closet without locks, belongs to the boy’s father, McCoig said. 
 
 When first responders and police arrived at the scene Saturday night, they found the girl “lying on the ground with a gunshot to the chest,” McCoig said. She was taken to an area hospital, where she died from her wounds. 
 
 [Young people are far more likely to die by guns than in cars] 
 
 On Monday, a judge ordered the boy to be held in a juvenile facility pending his next court hearing Oct. 28; the case could later be transferred to adult court, McCoig said. 
 
 MaKayla will be interred Thursday at the Haun Cemetery in Luttrell, Tenn. Her family will be receiving guests at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Cooke-Campbell Mortuary in Maynardville, and her funeral will be held at 7 p.m. 
 
 The family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made toward funeral expenses. 
 
 “Our precious daughter went to her Heavenly home Saturday, October 3, 2015,” reads her obituary. MaKayla leaves behind a brother, three sisters, her parents, numerous grandparents and great-grandparents. 
 
 Saturday’s killing, which came just two days after a mass school shooting in rural Oregon, has rocked the small community of White Pine, Tenn. Both children attended White Pine School, which teaches students from kindergarten through eighth grade, Principal Bill Walker said. 
 
 “We remember her smile and her beautiful face,” Walker told reporters Monday. “Our normal has changed.” 
 
 [Where in America do gun owners live?] 
 
 Chasity Arwood, manager of the White Pine mobile home park, where the shooting took place, told the Knoxville News Sentinel that MaKayla and another girl were by the boy’s window and the trio were “laughing and giggling.” 
 
 “He asked the little girl to see her puppies,” Arwood told WBIR. “She said no and laughed and then turned around, looked at her friend and said, ‘Let’s go get the –‘ and never got ‘puppies’ out.” 
 
 Arwood told the Sentinel that the boy threw the shotgun out of the window after firing it. 
 
 Dyer said she had previously approached the school principal about the 11-year-old bullying her daughter, Knoxville’s WATE TV reported. 
 
 “When we first moved to White Pine, the little boy was bullying MaKayla. He was making fun of her, calling her names, just being mean to her,” Dyer said Sunday. “I had to go to the principal about him, and then he quit for a while. And then all of a sudden yesterday, he shot her.” 
 
 Walker declined to confirm to reporters Monday that Dyer talked to him about bullying, citing the ongoing investigation. 
 
 [How often do children in the U.S. unintentionally shoot and kill people? We don’t know.] 
 
 Counselors were at the school to support students and staff in the aftermath of the shooting. 
 
 “Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved from both families,” Walker said, according to WATE. “It’s not just the school that’s hurting; it’s the whole community.” 
 
 McCoig said the killing has taken a toll on his investigators. “We only get through it by the grace of God,” he said. 
 
 [This article, originally published Oct. 5, has been updated.] 
 
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 In 30 states, a child can still legally own a rifle or shotgun 
 
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– An 11-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting his 8-year-old neighbor when she refused to show him her puppies got the 12-gauge shotgun used in the shooting from an unlocked closet in his mobile home in White Pine, Tenn., police say. Jefferson County Sheriff Bud McCoig tells the Washington Post the gun belonged to the boy's father. A neighbor tells WBIR that MaKayla Dyer, 8, was playing outside with neighbors around 7:30pm on Saturday when the pair began speaking through an open window of the boy's home. "He asked the little girl to see her puppies. She said no and laughed and then turned around, looked at her friend, and said, 'Let's go get the—' and never got 'puppies' out." McCoig says the boy "retrieved a gun" and shot MaKayla through the window, before throwing the gun outside. Emergency personnel found MaKayla, who lived nearby with her mother and older siblings, "lying on the ground with a gunshot to the chest," McCoig says. When the boy's mother was told what happened, "she slammed the door, locked it, and we never seen her after that," the neighbor adds, per the Guardian. MaKayla's mother, meanwhile, says the boy had a history of "just being mean to her. I had to go to the principal about him, and then he quit for a while." The superintendent of a juvenile detention center says the "very tiny" boy, who weighs about 55 pounds, is being kept in a regular "pod" with other juveniles aged 12 to 17 until a hearing Oct. 28, reports CNN. He's the youngest person to be held there on a murder charge during the superintendent's 44-year career. "It is the most pitiful case on both sides," he says. Meanwhile, a heart-wrenching photo on Twitter shows one of MaKayla's puppies on her porch, apparently waiting for her to come home.