4-year-old shoots himself after finding gun under pillow before his nap, cops say
As a 4-year-old went down for a nap in bed beside his father’s girlfriend, he reached underneath a pillow, Arizona police say.
There, his hands felt a 9mm handgun, Moroni Mendez, an officer with the Glendale Police Department, said at a March 21 news conference.
The Glendale boy fired the gun, accidentally shooting himself in the chest the morning of March 20, Mendez said.
“What did you do?” his father’s girlfriend told police she asked him as she “cuddled him in her arms,” court documents show.
The woman told police the boy said “he was sorry.”
He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said in a news release.
Subsequently, police said the woman, 31, and boy’s father, 44, were arrested.
McClatchy News is not identifying the suspects to protect the child’s identity.
Each is facing charges of child neglect/abuse, endangerment, and misconduct of weapons stemming from the boy’s accidental shooting, according to police.
“It’s just a terrible case,” Mendez said. “It’s one of those cases where we just want to stress the practice of gun safety.”
Gun kept under pillow
Out of fear for her life from a separate incident, the woman told police she had been sleeping with a gun, “but she would make it safe.”
The woman told police that prior to the shooting, she took the magazine out of the gun but couldn’t recall if there was a bullet in the chamber, court documents show.
She placed the loaded magazine by the gun underneath her pillow, she told police.
As the boy was arguing with his 5-year-old brother, the woman told police she had him come lie down with her in the bed.
The woman was facing away from the child, when she heard a “pew,” she told police.
She whipped around and saw the boy lying on his stomach, the woman told police. She screamed for her boyfriend and called 911.
Following shooting
The boy’s father, who was outside working on his Dodge Ram, heard the gunshot and ran inside the home, the man told police, court documents show.
His girlfriend was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, who was giving her instruction on how to care for the boy, the man told police.
The woman told police that the man doesn’t “handle situations like this well,” adding that he began to throw things and punched a hole in the wall, court documents show.
The dispatcher heard the ruckus over the phone and asked that the father step outside the home, the woman told police.
She told the man to sit in his car and wait for first responders to arrive, the woman told police.
After the boy was taken to a hospital, Mendez said the child “is expected to survive.”
When officers searched the home, they found .40-caliber rounds throughout the house, including in the master bedroom, court documents show.
In addition to finding the 9mm handgun with a loaded magazine beside it, officers also found a rifle round in a men’s jacket inside a closet, court documents show.
While searching the back yard, officers found a .40-caliber gun “in the middle of the dirt,” court documents show. Officers also found a handgun magazine in a Dodge Charger, court documents show.
Warned before
The woman told police that the two boys have been told “they are not to touch or play with guns,” court documents show.
She told police she and her boyfriend “will not even buy the children toy guns to play with as they don’t find them suitable for them to play with.”
Prior to this shooting, the couple was previously warned about gun safety, police said in the release.
Less than a year prior, police said they responded to the home about a family fight to find the same boy injured in this incident “playing with disassembled weapons.”
“We really just want to get that message out: the importance of keeping guns locked in a very safe environment,” Jose Santiago, the police department’s media manager, said at the end of the news conference. “This child was in a bed with a weapon … that’s not something you ever want to see.”
Glendale is about a 10-mile drive northwest of Phoenix.
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