A Brookhaven woman killed by gunfire while driving was the victim of a stray bullet, authorities believe.

Brookhaven Police Chief Kenneth Collins said Mashonna Shunta Dunnigan, 44, was traveling on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive around midnight Tuesday after picking up her son, when a bullet entered her vehicle and struck her. The car came to rest at the side of the C-Store at the intersection of East Monticello Street.

Collins said police received a call of shots fired around midnight, then another call 14 minutes later to say a woman had been shot.

Dunnigan was apparently the victim of a stray bullet and was not targeted, the chief said.

“When you indiscriminately fire a weapon, you have unintended consequences,” Collins said.

The fatal shooting is being treated as a homicide, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Mississippi Crime Scene Unit are assisting BPD in the ongoing investigation.

The chief asks anyone with information on the shooting to come to the department and give a statement on the record.

“I know this is a devastating time for the family, and I’m asking that they talk to the young people in their family and keep them calm, because the last thing we need is retaliation, for somebody else not involved in anything — some innocent person — to get hurt or killed,” Collins said. “Let’s handle this the right way. Street justice is no justice.”