The boy is in a critical condition.
A three-year-old boy in New Jersey, United States, accidentally shot himself with a gun. When police arrived at the scene of a shooting on August 15, around 5:47 pm local time, they discovered the boy and two other children inside a home on Wainwright Street, according to a statement from Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Frage. The boy was brought to the University Hospital for treatment and is currently in critical condition.
As per a report in People, the police department said that the incident is under investigation. "A firearm was recovered at the scene. The shooting appears to have been accidental and self-inflicted. This incident remains under investigation. No further information is available," they added.
Notably, the three-year-old's older brother was seen asking people for help at a local store, according to the CCTV footage. The store manager recalled that the boy was covered in blood and informed that his brother could not breathe. A clerk at the store went to the boy's home and found the younger one in a pool of blood. He told the manager, "Boss, there's a little boy rolling around in blood," before the manager called 911.
"I'm scared myself because we were here, but we didn't know what was happening, but we saw all the cops and everything," Newark resident Edith Frinpong, who is a mother of two, said.
She added, "We should be careful to put weapons in our homes ... in a safe place."
The Newark Department of Public Safety later took to Facebook, and asked gun owners to be "vigilant about gun safety by taking extra precautions when storing a firearm." They asked them to keep guns "unloaded and locked up" in storage, secure ammunition "separate from the gun," and consider using a "gun lock". They also asked the locals to hide keys or passcodes to gun storage.
"You cannot be too careful about where and how you secure a firearm, especially in homes or other locations where children may be present," the caption said.
The incident comes almost a year after a three-year-old accidentally shot and killed her sister in Harris County, Texas, according to local news outlet KTVB7. Sheriff Ed Gonzales posted about the incident, saying the four-year-old died on the spot. The outlet quoted him as saying that there were five adults at an apartment on Bammel North Houston Road near Tomball Parkway where the incident took place. They were all family and friends, Mr Gonzales added. According to law enforcement authorities, the girl lived at the apartment with their parents.
The parents of the girls left them alone in one room and that's where the three-year-old found a loaded gun, according to the sheriff. The toddler fired a single shot, which killed her elder sister, the officer added.