Toddler Accidentally Kills Mother With Gun

A toddler has accidentally shot and killed his 22-year-old mother with a gun, police confirmed on Monday.

Gatekeepers News report that the incident happened on Saturday evening in the parking lot of a supermarket in Dolton, a suburb of the Midwestern city, Chicago.

The three-year-old boy who was sitting in the child seat at the back of a car, with his parents in the front, managed to get his hands on his father’s pistol, without anyone knowing how.

The child “began playing with it inside the car. At some point the child pulled the trigger,” local police chief Robert Collins told AFP.

The boy shot his mother, Daejah Bennett, in the back of the neck. She was rushed to a Chicago hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Gatekeepers News reports that the boy’s father was taken into custody while police investigated whether he possessed the gun legally and should be charged.

This is not the first time a similar incident is reported in the US.

“Every year, 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,” and shoot off rounds accidentally, according to a recent report by Everytown For Gun Safety.

The organization, which campaigns for better supervision of firearms and in particular for requirements that they be stored securely, estimates that “unintentional shootings” by minors cause an average of 350 deaths each year.

According to the Gun Violence Archive website, firearms are used in approximately 40,000 deaths a year in the United States, including suicides.