A one-year-old boy in Texas underwent surgery after his four-year-old brother accidentally shot him in the leg Tuesday night after finding an unsecured handgun at his Houston home, authorities said.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on Twitter that the one-year-old was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound after the incident but is expected to survive.
The children’s father said KPRC 2 News that he was not home at the time of the shooting, but the children’s mother was. He told the outlet that the four-year-old liked to play with toy guns and was probably unaware that he’d found a real one that belonged to a relative who lived in the house.
Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Gilliland told KPRC that the Crimes Against Children Division is investigating the circumstances leading up to the shooting.
A spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s office told HuffPost that law enforcement investigations are ongoing and that in each case a grand jury will determine whether indictments are appropriate.
Harris County Sheriff Major Saul Suarez Tuesday urged gun owners to properly guard their firearms from their children press conference.
“I want to use this time to remind the community to be responsible when it comes to guns,” Suarez said. “Make sure you secure them, especially if there are children in the house.”
Accordingly Data According to advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been at least 113 accidental gunshots by children in the United States so far this year, killing 47 and injuring 68. This incident occurs just two months after a similar accidental shooting in Harris Countywhere a three-year-old killed her four-year-old sister after finding her parents’ gun.
Firearms are the leading cause of death in children in the US for car accidents and cancer. A Pew Research Center analysis found that the number of children and young people killed by firearms increased by 50% between 2019 and 2021.