This tragedy, tragically commonplace in the United States, took place on Saturday evening in the parking lot of a supermarket in Dolton, in the suburbs of Chicago. The boy was sitting in his child seat in the back of a car, with his parents in the front.
Without anyone knowing why, he found himself with his father’s pistol in his hands. “He started playing with it and at one point he pulled the trigger,” local police chief Robert Collins told AFP.
His mother, Daejah Bennett, 22, was shot in the back of the neck. She was pronounced dead at a Chicago hospital where she had been rushed.
The father was taken into custody while it was determined whether he possessed the gun legally and whether he should be prosecuted, Collins said.
This death is part of a staggering series of comparable accidents.
“Each year in the United States, hundreds of children gain access to loaded and unsecured weapons, in closets, nightstands, backpacks or purses, or simply left lying around” and shoot unintentionally , according to a recent report by Everytown For Gun Safety.
The organization, which campaigns for better supervision of firearms and in particular to require them to be stored in secure safes, estimates that these “unintentional shootings” of minors cause an average of 350 deaths each year.
More generally, firearms cause approximately 40,000 deaths a year in the United States, including suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.