A child was killed after a gun they were playing with was fired while their caretaker was in another room at the time.
The incident happened Monday night in Detroit, Michigan while an uncle was watching two siblings. The two boys, aged 6 and 5, found a gun that wasn’t properly secured and started playing with it. While they were doing so, the gun accidentally went off and the 5-year-old was hit with a bullet in the eye. The uncle was reportedly in the basement of the house at the time playing video games, WXYZ News reported.
“The 6-year-old said to his uncle, ‘My brother is dying. We need help,'” said Detroit Deputy Police Commissioner Deshaune Sims.
The boy was taken to a nearby children’s hospital for treatment but eventually died from his injuries. The older brother is not believed to have suffered any injuries, and it is also believed he was not in the same room as his sibling when the gun went off, according to Local 4 News.
Police officials said the boy’s uncle was taken into custody after the incident but has not cooperated with law enforcement since. Immediately after the accidental shooting, police said their focus was on finding the gun involved in the accident.
“Right now we’re trying to find a gun,” Detroit police said in a statement, according to WXYZ. “We could not recover a weapon at this time.”
Gun violence, particularly incidents involving children, remains a pervasive problem in Detroit, with the city reporting 67 incidents in which children were shot last year. While WXYZ didn’t have specific numbers in its report, it did note that the number of recordings was already in the double digits this year.
“Unfortunately we’re back here,” Sims said. “We’ve been on a lot of these things and the message is, if you’ve got a gun, put it up, lock it up. Keep them away from children. Unfortunately, parents and carers are not heeding that message…hopefully one person will heed and keep guns away from areas where children can easily access them.”
A law that would criminalize the improper storage of firearms by janitors has been proposed, but it has not yet passed the Michigan state legislature.
Newsweek reached out to the Detroit Police Department for comment.
A similarly tragic incident occurred earlier this month in West Baltimore, Maryland, when a 9-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a 15-year-old girl while playing with a loaded gun. The bullet hit the girl in the face, after which the boy fled the scene.
