A 10-year-old boy has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head after finding a gun in the house where he and his sister were home alone playing.
According to ABC News, the tragic incident occurred at 6 p.m. on Saturday in the Tioga-Nicetown area of Philadelphia. The boy was home alone with his 8-year-old sister and reportedly discovered a gun inside a cabinet.
“Supposedly there was a gun inside a cabinet that the children located and, at some point, the child discharged the weapon into his own head,” Philadelphia Police Capt. Lee Strollo told local news outlet WPVI in an interview following the tragedy. “We’re looking into how the gun got on location and who the owner of the gun is.”
The boy’s traumatized sister immediately ran to a neighbor’s house for help. Witnesses say the boy was quickly rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead.
Cops said that the gun should never have been left out in the open or accessible to the children to begin with and that the children should not have been left at home alone either. It is currently unclear how long the children had been left alone or where their parents were at the time of the shooting.
