A two-year-old boy has accidentally killed his eight-month-pregnant mother by shooting her in the back with a firearm that was loaded and within the child's reach, the local Ohio state police (United States) have reported. ).
The 31-year-old fatality and mother of the child asked for help on the afternoon of June 16 and said that she was hit at her home in Norwalk by a bullet fired by her own son, David Smith, a member of the commissioner of the police to local media.
"She explained that she was 33 weeks pregnant and that her two-year-old son accidentally shot her in the back with a gun," he told News 5 Cleveland.
Despite the rapid intervention of the emergency services, the woman died in hospital and the child she was expecting could not be saved and also lost her life.
Still conscious when police arrived, she explained that her son had managed to get into the usually locked master bedroom while she was doing laundry and had started playing with the gun. In parallel, police also found a 9mm pistol on the nightstand along with two other loaded firearms.
The victim's husband, who was not at home during the tragedy, informed the police that the weapons were his.
This new tragedy is the latest in a long series in the United States, a country with 400 million firearms for some 330 million inhabitants.
In March, a 3-year-old girl accidentally killed her 4-year-old sister with a gun near Houston, Texas, despite the presence of five adults, including her parents, at home.
About 40% of American households own guns, a large portion of which have children, according to the Pew Research Center. And less than half of those households store their guns safely, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.
Norwalk's police chief has reminded people with firearms permits to take extra precautions, including using "locks, safes," and "at least leave (guns) unloaded."
