Playing with his father's pistol, an eight-year-old boy killed a one-year-old infant and wounded another two-year-old child over the weekend in Florida - an incident tragically common in the US.
The father, Roderick Randall, 45, was arrested and charged with negligence resulting in manslaughter, unlawful possession of a firearm and removing evidence from a crime scene, said Chip Simmons, the sheriff in Escambia County.
The tragedy unfolded at a motel where the 40-year-old man with a heavy criminal record had gone to find his partner. He went with his son. She with her twin children, two years old, and her one-year-old daughter.
At some point, he walked out of the room and left the gun "in a closet," Sheriff Simmons explained during a press conference. Knowing where it was hidden, "his son took it and started playing with it."
The mother of the girl who was killed was asleep
"He shot the one-year-old infant and killed her. After penetrating it, the bullet wounded one of the twins, but she is expected to survive," the sheriff added, stressing that the victims' mother was asleep.
When the father returned, he removed the gun and substances, possibly drugs, from the room before police arrived.
The little girl's death, according to the AP, adds to the horrific string of similar accidents in the country.
"Every year, hundreds of children in the US find loaded guns that have not been safely stored, in closets, nightstands, backpacks, purses, or simply abandoned" and shoot unintentionally, the non-governmental organization Everytown For Gun Safety stressed in a recent report.
The NGO, which is mainly fighting for stricter controls on firearms purchases, estimates that accidents when guns fall into the hands of children "shooting without intent" claim the lives of some 350 Americans a year on average.
More broadly, firearms cause some 40.000 deaths annually in the US, including suicides, according to the specialist website Gun Violence Archive.
Source: in.gr
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