Steph Deschamps / June 3, 2023
A young child, aged 4 according to the press, was accidentally killed on Wednesday by another child with a firearm in the Chicago suburbs, according to a statement sent on Thursday
This tragedy, another illustration of the very heavy toll paid by the United States to the spread of firearms, took place at around 10:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, when police discovered that a child had been "accidentally shot with a firearm by another child from the same household", according to the press release.
The father of the fatally shot girl, who owned the handgun in good standing and called 911, told investigators that the gun was stored high up in a closet, according to law enforcement officials in River Grove, a western suburb of Chicago (Illinois, north).
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the deceased child was a 4-year-old girl.
This kind of tragedy is not uncommon. Every year, 19,000 children are killed or injured by firearms, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that campaigns for greater restrictions on firearms.
In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among young people aged 1 to 19, with 4,368 deaths, ahead of car accidents and overdoses, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).