A three-year-old boy shot himself in the face with a handgun he found in his dad’s bedside table. The shooting occurred as the three-year-old and a seven-year-old were being watched by their 16-year-old sister while the parents went shopping, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said at a news conference Thursday.
The Sheriff’s Office described the scene as “one of the worst calls imaginable” to respond to.
The tragedy struck on Wednesday evening at a home in DeLand, a small city located about 40 miles north of Orlando, Florida.
At around 6:29 pm a deputy arrived on scene and tried to save the boy, but it was “obvious” at that point in time that it was too late, Sheriff Chitwood said.
According to the sheriff the gun was fired once.
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The boy’s 16-year-old sister contacted 911 to report the tragedy – a call the sheriff describes as “heartbreaking”.
In her frantic call, the girl told the dispatcher, “My little brother shot himself!”, adding that “there is blood everywhere!” she said, screaming and crying”.
It’s not clear exactly how the boy got into his father’s nightstand and fired the gun, Chitwood said.
“For some reason, I don’t know that reason and I don’t know if we’ll ever know that reason, the 3-year-old wandered in the bedroom and wandered into the end table, and when he got into the end table, he picked the gun out, turned it toward himself and shot himself point blank range,” he said.
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The father told deputies that guns were normally kept in a safe in the bedroom, but the safe’s electronic lock had stopped working and he instead put one on top of the fridge and the other in his nightstand.
No charges have been filed. The sheriff’s office noted that, per Florida law, when a child is accidentally shot, “no arrest shall be made prior to seven days after the date of the shooting”.
The case will be fully investigated and submitted to the State Attorney’s Office for review, officials said.
The sheriff pleaded with gun owners to keep them in safes.
“If you have little ones, even if you have teenagers, you gotta lock them up,” he said.
More than 100 kids die accidentally from guns each year, a 2015 study found.
Almost all of them were male, and typically inside the home of family or a friend.
