A 5-year-old boy has reportedly shot a 3-year-old girl to death in Bena, Minnesota on Friday. The unfortunate incident reportedly occurred in the early hours of Friday, around 3:50 a.m., ABC News reports.
Sheriff Tom Burch of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office said deputies found the girl fatally shot when they responded to the gunshot.
They were told a little kid had accidentally shot the girl.
Family and police officials moved the wounded girl to the Deer River hospital, but an ambulance service from the county met them along the way.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate the girl, but she was later moved to the hospital where she was declared dead.
The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office has commenced an autopsy on the girl while police have also started investigations into the events surrounding the shooting, NBC News wrote.
They are working to unravel how the boy got hold of a gun and what transpired before the gun “accidentally” went off. Sheriff Burch has not revealed the relationship between the girl and the boy, and it remains unclear if the boy will be facing criminal charges for the girl’s death.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 968 children have been killed untimely by guns in 2021, while the Children’s Defense Fund revealed that 3,371 children and teenagers died from gunshot wounds in 2019.