USA: Eight-year-old plays with his father’s pistol, kills a one-year-old girl

Playing with his father’s pistol, an eight-year-old boy killed a one-year-old baby and injured another two-year-old boy over the weekend in Florida – a tragically common occurrence in the United States.

The father, Roderick Randall, 45, was arrested and charged with negligence that resulted in homicide, illegal possession of firearms and the removal of evidence from a crime scene, said Chip Simmons, Sheriff of Escampia County.

The tragedy unfolded in a motel where the forty-year-old 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 one point, he left the room and left the gun “in a cupboard,” Sheriff Simmons explained during a news conference. Knowing where it was hidden, “his son took it and started playing with it”.

“He shot and killed a one-year-old baby. After piercing him, the bullet wounded one of the twins, who is expected to survive,” the sheriff added, stressing that the victims’ mother was asleep.

When the father returned, he removed the weapon and substances, possibly drugs, from the room before the police arrived.

The death of the little girl adds to the horrific series of similar accidents in the country.

Source: AMPE

“Every year, hundreds of children in the United States find themselves full of weapons that have not been safely stored in lockers, nightstands, backpacks, bags, or just abandoned, and shoot unintentionally,” she said in a recent report. Everytown For Gun Safety government organization.

The NGO, which fights mainly to tighten gun control, estimates that accidents involving guns in the hands of “unintentionally shooting” children cost the lives of an average of 350 Americans a year.

More broadly, firearms cause some 40,000 deaths a year in the United States, including suicide, according to the Gun Violence Archive.