A 12-year-old girl was shot to death yesterday afternoon by a 15-year-old boy playing with a handgun in a West Baltimore rowhouse, city police said.

Janet Paula Edwards of the 1300 block of Riggs Ave. was pronounced dead shortly after she arrived at University of Maryland Medical Center, said her grandmother, Beatrice Banks.

"Janet has lived with me since she was 4 years old," she said. "And now she is gone."

The girl was visiting her aunt and cousins who live two doors down from her on Riggs Avenue at 2:50 p.m. when the shooting happened.

Police were looking last night for Tyree Paige of the 1400 block of West Franklin St. Detectives have issued warrants charging him as an adult with manslaughter and weapons violations.

"She [Miss Edwards] was in a room with several juveniles when a 15-year-old was playing with the gun and it went off," said city homicide Detective Chris Graul. "There were adults in another part of the house."

Detective Graul and Mrs. Banks said Tyree Paige is a friend of children who live in the rowhouse and brought the gun there to "show off."

"He might have been playing [Russian roulette] before this happened," he said. "But she [Janet Edwards] was not involved in it." He said the boy ran out of the house immediately after the shooting.

Mrs. Banks said she often sent her granddaughter, a seventh-grader at Harlem Park Elementary School, to her daughter's home when she went out.