An eight-year-old boy shot and killed a baby and injured her little sister while playing with his father’s gun in Florida last weekend, police said.
The father, 45-year-old Roderick Randall, was arrested and charged with negligent negligence, unlawful possession of a firearm and concealing evidence, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said.
The tragedy — which is all too common in a country full of guns — happened at a motel where Randall, who has a criminal record of not owning a gun, was meeting with his girlfriend.
He had brought his son, his girlfriend her two-year-old twins and their one-year-old daughter.
At one point, Randall walked out and left his gun “in the closet,” the sheriff said during a news conference. Knowing where it was hidden, his son took it out and started playing with it while the girls’ mother slept.
“He pulls the gun from the holster, starts playing with it, and shoots a bullet at the one-year-old, eventually killing the one-year-old. The bullet then goes through and hits one of the two year old toddlers who is injured but is expected to recover.”
When the father returned, he took the gun and an unidentified substance that may have been drugs from the room before police arrived.
The little girl’s death is the latest in a staggering series of similar accidents.
“Each year, hundreds of children in the United States gain access to unsecured, loaded guns in closets and nightstand drawers, in backpacks and purses, or just left out,” according to a recent Everytown For Gun Safety report.
“With tragic regularity, children find these unsecured guns and accidentally shoot themselves or others.”
The organization, which advocates for more regulation of firearms, estimates that these “accidental shots” by minors cause an average of 350 deaths a year.
In general, firearms cause approximately 40,000 deaths, including suicides, annually in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.
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