Texas Boy Shoots Playmate; 5-Yr-old Victim in Critical Condition
Two Texan boys, aged 8 and 5, were playing, as what most kids their age do, on a cheery morning over the weekend at the younger boy's house when all too sudden the sound of a gun fired roared through the house. The elder boy found a .22-caliber rifle inside the bedroom at where they were playing, aimed it at the younger boy's head and eventually pulled the trigger.
The incident took place at Denton on Saturday at around 11:30 a.m. The 5-year-old boy still remains in critical condition at the Children's Medical Center in Dallas.
Initial investigations showed it was unclear where the older boy found the loaded gun.
"It was not in the parents' [bedroom]," Officer Orlando Hinojosa, a Denton police spokesman, was quoted by the Denton Record Chronicle.
The boys were with two adults along with one teenager, a 16-year-old relative, were present at the time of the incident. The two adults were the 5-year-old's grandparents.
His parents were at work at the time, Mr Hinojosa said.
Although no charges have so far been filed, Mr Hinojosa said this could still change.
However, police were ruling shooting as an accident.
Mr Hinojosa urged parents who owned and kept guns to talk to their children about gun safety.
"You know education is very, very important especially with firearms. If parents do own firearms you must educate your children that they are not toys," he said.
The Denton shooting incident is the third of a streak of shooting accidents involving kids aged less than 10 years old in Texas.
On Wednesday, a 5-year old and 7-year old brothers were playing unsupervised in the bath when the younger boy accidentally shot the older boy with an old rifle. On Thursday, using his dad's handgun, a two-year-old fatally shot himself in the head, all while his father was busy elsewhere in the room.
Early this month, a 5-year old in Kentucky likewise accidentally killed his 2-year-old sister with a .22-caliber Cricket rifle, a little rifle the boy received as a gift last year.
Read here: American Child Gun Owner Shots 2-Year-Old Sister Dead
The grandfather of the Kentucky boy lambasted the concept of gifting guns to very young children, "He is too young to have a gun."
"Too many people think it's (guns) for target practice. Well, what comes after target practicing-killing. I know, I was in the Marine Corps," he was quoted by the Star Democrat. "When you pick this (gun) up, you're usually going to kill something."
According to a graph contained in a project of Slate and Mother Jones, 71 children have died due to guns just in the last five months in the United States.