REDSTONE, Pa. -- On narrow Broadway Street in the steep and tiny Fayette County coal-patch town of Allison 1, everybody seemed to know 12-year-old Mikey Muha.

And so neighbors struggled to grapple yesterday with the news that Mikey was dead -- shot in the chest, police said, by his father in the midst of a Sunday night domestic dispute.

"He was the neighborhood baby," said Valinecia Lynn Barnes, who lives a few doors down from the Muhas and had recently started taking Mikey to church with her.

"There was just something special about him. He needed love and anybody that knew that little boy just wanted to give him all the love you could give a child."

Mikey's father, Michael Alan Muha Jr., 39, was being held at the Fayette County Prison on charges including homicide. His mother, Christine Shaw, 36, has been imprisoned at State Correctional Institution Muncy in Lycoming County since April on charges related to shoplifting.

Life was often chaotic at the Muha house, said Ms. Barnes, and Sunday night was no exception.

According to the state police, a fight broke out between Mr. Muha and Tasha Miciotto, who police identified as Mr. Muha's girlfriend.

During the argument, Mr. Muha asked Mikey to get his shotgun from his car. A neighbor, Wesley Silva, told police that he heard Mr. Muha yell that he was going to shoot somebody because he wasn't going to have "this problem" anymore. An affidavit in the case did not specify what the problem was.

Witnesses told police that Mr. Muha was waving the gun around and that it discharged, striking Mikey in the chest. Nicholas Muha, Mikey's 9-year-old brother, told Ms. Barnes that he put his hand over Mikey's wound to try to stop the bleeding. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

"We believe that he wasn't the intended victim," said state Trooper Joseph Christy. "He wasn't the one fighting with his father."

Ms. Barnes described Mr. Muha as a good father who took his sons hunting and fishing. He did not work, she said, and collected disability checks.

The Muha home is partially boarded up -- remnants of a fire there two years ago, said a neighbor across the street who asked not to be identified. A curtain at the house flapped yesterday behind a broken second-story window.

Mikey was a student at Brownsville Area Middle School, said Ms. Barnes.

School officials could not be reached yesterday.

Ms. Barnes said she had seen caseworkers at the house in the past.

"I wish CYS would have just took them instead of it coming to this," she said.

She said Mikey frequently played with her children in her house, in part to get away from troubles at home.

"He was such a nice boy, in spite of everything that he's been through," said Ms. Barnes, adding that he would help her clean her yard or take out the trash. "I always told him I loved him, just in case he didn't hear it."