Photo is representational.
A 3-year-old boy in Hinkley, MN has died after accidentally shooting himself with his father’s handgun.
The father called police “screaming for help”, saying that “his son had shot himself.”
The father, who lives with a roommate, “stated he had a 9mm handgun in his room and that was what [the child] got ahold of.” The court documents stated that first-responders noticed “near the child was a black cell phone and a gun in question was lying on top of the safe about five feet from the child but the gun had been moved in the process of trying to save the child.”
While investigations are ongoing, no charges have been filed in this tragedy. Fatal shootings conducted by children skyrocketed during the pandemic. More children were killed by firearms than on-duty police officers in 2022. The statistic for children who shot another person went up 33% over lockdown; in 2021, there were 259 fatal or near-fatal shootings from a perpetrator under the age of 18.
Sources:
3-year old boy in Hinckley fatally shoots himself with gun found in father’s house | MPR News
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1032725392/guns-death-children
