6-year-old boy shoots, kills 4-year-old brother

New York: In yet another shooting incident in the US involving toddlers, a six-year-old boy playing with his mother’s gun accidentally shot and killed his four-year- old brother.

The older boy was playing with his mother’s loaded gun at the family’s third-floor apartment in New Jersey when he accidentally shot his brother in the head, Connie Jackson, a city spokeswoman, said. The boy was taken to University Hospital in Newark where he was pronounced dead on Saturday, a hospital spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The boys’ mother, 22-year-old Itiyanah Spruill, was arrested later and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and a weapons violation. She was being held on USD 310,000 bail.
This is a terribly unfortunate incident, Mayor Lester E Taylor III said in a statement.
“People should not have a gun around a four-year-old and a six-year-old,” a neighbour said. The incident was the latest in a slew of shootings in the US involving toddlers.

A 5-year-old girl in Detroit last month died after she shot herself with a gun she found under her grandmother’s pillow. Also last month, a five-year-old girl accidentally shot herself dead while playing with her father’s handgun in Lousiana.

PTI