WASHINGTON: A toddler riding in the back of a car accidentally shot dead his mother with a gun that slid out from under the driver's seat, US police said on Wednesday (Apr 27).
The 26-year-old victim, Patrice Price, was
pronounced dead at the scene following Tuesday's incident in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, the local sheriff's office said.
The child, aged two and a half and identified
by local media as a boy, fired the 40-calibre gun through the driver's
seat where his mother was at the wheel.
Local broadcaster WISN quoted the victim's
father as saying that she was a mother of three. "This little girl right
here meant everything in the world to me," Andre Price told the
station. "And I lost the other half of my heart."
The weapon apparently belonged to the victim's
security guard boyfriend, with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper
reporting that she was driving his car because hers had been stolen
days earlier.
The sheriff's office said that deputies found a
security officer's gun belt belonging to the boyfriend on the floor of
the front passenger seat. The firearm was recovered on the floor behind
the driver's seat. An investigation is under way.
Also in the vehicle was another of Price's
children, aged one, and the woman's mother. Neither of the children was
in a car seat.
Price's mother told relatives that her
daughter turned to her after a loud pop rang out and said: "Momma, don't
let me die," WISN reported.
Following the shooting, fellow motorists
stopped and pushed the car out of traffic before police arrived and
performed CPR on Price while awaiting the arrival of emergency medical
personnel.
Tuesday's shooting comes on the heels of a
similar accident, though not fatal, in Florida last month. In that
instance, a four-year-old boy accidentally shot his mother in the back
while she was at the wheel, leaving the passionately pro-gun woman badly
wounded.
Jamie Gilt, who had boasted online about her
toddler's shooting prowess, was cruising down a major thoroughfare with
her son in the back when he shot her on Mar 8. The bullet went through
the seat cushion.
The mother and boy were on their way to pick
up a horse, said police, who rushed to Gilt's aid after an officer
checked to see why the vehicle had stopped.
The weapon was a .45-calibre handgun the boy
found on the floor of the pickup truck Gilt was driving. Police said she
legally owned the weapon.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a group
aimed at reducing US gun violence, there have been at least 77
shootings this year during which a child or adolescent aged 17 or under
unintentionally fired a gun and killed or injured someone.
Firearms claim the lives of some 30,000 people in the United States each year.
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