Police: Toddler Picks Up Loaded Gun, Accidentally Kills One-Year-Old
CLEVELAND, April 12 (UPI) — A one-year-old boy was killed Sunday after being shot in the head by a three-year-old boy who found a loaded gun in a Cleveland home, police say.
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters the boy was pronounced dead and that officers are investigating who owned the pistol.
A woman lived at the residence with three children, according to neighbors, and police say an adult was home at the time of the shooting.
Investigators made interviews and gathered evidence at the two-story house for an hour-and-a-half, and the mother of the one-year-old boy could reportedly be heard screaming upon hearing of her son’s death.
Williams told reporters a three-year-old could not be held accountable for what happened, and that whoever brought the pistol into the house and left it where it could be accessed by the toddler would likely face charges.
“This fascination we have with handguns, not just in the city, but in this country, has to stop. This is a senseless loss of life in this city again,” Williams told WEWS. “It’s directly related to guns. We need to really take a hard look at the things that we’re doing out there on the state, local and national level to get some of these guns out of our community.”
In January a similar incident occurred in Missouri when a five-year-old accidentally shot his baby brother in the head with a .22-caliber revolver that police later found near the baby’s crib.
