Washington: A three-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his mother while playing with a gun in the suburbs of Chicago, United States, on Saturday. The incident took place on Saturday evening in the parking lot of a supermarket in Dolton, a suburb of the Midwestern city.
The young boy was sitting in the child-seat in the back of a car, with his parents in the front. Without anyone else knowing how, the boy managed to get his hands on his father’s pistol. ‘The child began to play with it inside the car. At some point the child 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 rushed to a Chicago hospital where she was pronounced dead. The father was taken into custody while police investigated whether he possessed the gun legally and whether he should face charges, the officer said.
Also read: Russian forces attack TV Tower in Ukraine; 9 killed, 9 injured
Firearms are used in approximately 40,000 deaths a year in the United States, including suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive website. According to a recent report by Everytown For Gun Safety, an organization which campaigns for better supervision of firearms and in particular for requirements that they be stored securely, said that ‘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 every year’.
Post Your Comments