(KAIR)--Investigators are working to verify details, while poring over information, following a vehicle pursuit Friday night that ended tragically in Leavenworth when a young child was killed. 

Leavenworth Police Chief Pat Kitchens says his department became involved around 7:30 when notified by Platte County, Missouri authorities that they were pursuing a kidnapping suspect who was traveling with a child. 

The suspect vehicle crossed the Centennial Bridge into Leavenworth but was forced to stop when it ran into construction on Metropolitan Avenue, leaving the vehicle disabled.

“The suspect got out and we had an exchange of gunfire,” Kitchens tells MSC News. “The suspect was wounded at some point. The suspect, we believe, shot and killed the small child that was in the car. Our officers were able to shoot again and incapacitate him. He was wounded seriously [and] taken by ambulance to a Kansas City hospital for his injuries.”

Kitchens says the child was pronounced dead at the scene, but would not specify the victim's relationship with the man. He also declined to provide additional details about the child, despite at least one Kansas City television station referring to the child as a girl. 

Speculation has placed a pursuit that happened Friday evening in Atchison as related to the case, but Kitchens says he can't confirm the correlation. “We're still trying to sort that out. We do have some information, but, again, we need to verify a lot of that before we can speak publicly about it. I can just tell you that we became involved when the chase crossed from Missouri into Kansas into the city of Leavenworth.” 

Kitchens says it's possible that more details regarding the tragic incident will be known, and made public, sometime Saturday.