Steph Deschamps / March 15, 2022
A three-year-old American child killed his mother while playing with a gun, police said Monday.
This tragedy, tragically common in the United States, took place Saturday evening in the parking lot of a supermarket in Dolton, a suburb of Chicago. The boy was sitting in his child seat in the back of a car, with his parents in the front. Without any explanation, he ended up with his father's gun in his hands.
He started playing with it and at some point he pulled the trigger, local police chief Robert Collins told AFP.
Her mother, Daejah Bennett, 22, was shot in the back of the head. She was pronounced dead at a Chicago hospital where she had been rushed to. The father was taken into custody while it was determined whether he legally owned the gun and whether he should be prosecuted, Collins said. This death is part of a shocking series of similar accidents.
Every year, hundreds of children in the United States gain access to loaded , unsecured guns in closets, nightstands, backpacks or purses, or simply left lying around and unintentionally fire them, according to a recent report by Everytown For Gun Safety.
The organization, which advocates for better gun control, including a requirement that guns be stored in safe deposit boxes, estimates that these unintentional shootings by minors cause an average of 350 deaths each year. More globally, firearms cause about 40,000 deaths per year in the United States, including suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive.