Three-year-old boy accidentally shoots sister, 2, after finding gun in home before family injured in car crash

Surgeons at the hospital said that the girl received severe damage to her internal organs

A three-year-old boy accidentally shot his two-year-old sister after finding the gun that was hidden in the couch cushions at their home in Lakeland, Florida (Screengrab/FOX 13 Tampa Bay)

Florida police say a three-year-old boy has shot his two-year-old sister after finding a gun hidden in the sofa cushions at their home in Lakeland.

Recounting the unfortunate series of events at a news conference, officers said the family was then involved in a car crash as they were rushing to the hospital, leading to “significant” injuries.

The shooting took place on Friday in Polk County, where police said the gun had been brought into the home of 24-year-old Chad Berrien by a family friend — 23-year-old Kevonte’ Wilson.

Wilson had hidden the gun between cushions on the couch in the belief that this would keep it away from the toddlers while they watched a basketball game with a third man, police said. The children’s mother was away at the time of the shooting, visiting her sister.

Grady Judd, the Polk County Sheriff, told the media: “Just before midnight, during the excitement of the ball game, they heard a pop.” He said that when the three men went looking, they found that the two-year-old had been shot and was on the couch and her brother, the three-year-old, “scrambled from the living room, running and crying to his bedroom”.

The girl was in an “exceptionally critical condition” after the shooting, police said. She had been shot in the chest. Her three-year-old brother was placed in his grandmother’s care in the meantime.

“He was a baby playing with what he thought was some sort of toy,” the sheriff said.

The men were taking the wounded toddler to the hospital when on their way, they got in an accident. Mr Judd said that they “T-boned another vehicle on the way there” adding that “there were significant injuries from that as well.”

A passerby who saw the accident took the two-year-old and one of the three men who was injured to the hospital.

Mr Berrien told the police that he didn’t know that Mr Wilson had brought a gun into the house.

During a search of the home, police found some cannabis, and he has been arrested on possession charges.

Mr Wilson is being charged with failing to safely store a firearm, possession of cannabis and carrying a concealed firearm.

The third man, identified as 23-year-old Rodderick Haynes, faces charges on four outstanding warrants unrelated to the shooting, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Mr Judd said that the police will hold the adults responsible for the “horrible tragic accident that should never have occurred.” He added that the police will hold the adults “appropriately, criminally liable for the conduct.”

Judd didn’t elaborate on how the children were related to the adults in the home. He told the media that “a Florida crime victim’s privacy law” prevented him from saying that.

The three men were “cooperating” with the detectives as the investigation progresses, Mr Judd said.

According to Mr Judd, surgeons at the hospital said that the girl sustained “severe damage to her internal organs in the shooting.” She has already undergone one “life-saving surgery” and is now being transferred to an intensive care unit.

In 2018, 4,775 young people aged 10-24 were victims of homicide — an average of 13 each day. And 1.7 million children in the US live with unlocked, loaded guns, with one out of every three homes with kids having at least one firearm, according to a study by the Center for Violence Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.