An eight-year-old boy killed a one-year-old newborn and injured a girl in Florida while playing with his father’s gun. The 45-year-old was arrested and charged with culpable negligence, unlawful possession of firearms and concealment of evidence.
The scene took place last weekend in a motel, where the 40-year-old with a heavy criminal record had found his girlfriend, the sheriff of Escambia said on Tuesday. He had come with his son, she with her two-year-old twins and her one-year-old daughter.
At one point, the man went away leaving his weapon “in a closet”, said the sheriff. “His son grabbed it and started playing with it.”
“He shot the one-year-old newborn and killed him. After crossing it, the bullet injured one of the twins who should be fine, ”continued the sheriff, noting that the mother of the victims was then asleep.
40,000 deaths per year
When the father returned, he took the gun and some substances, probably drugs, out of the bedroom before the police arrived.
This death is part of a staggering series of comparable accidents. The organization Everytown For Gun Safety, which campaigns for better supervision of firearms, estimates that these “unintentional shootings” of minors cause an average of 350 deaths each year.
More generally, firearms cause around 40,000 deaths a year in the United States, including suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.