A 10-month-old baby has died after being fatally shot by a toddler who got ahold of an unsecured gun inside a car parked outside the Audie L. Murphy VA Medical Center.
San Antonio police were dispatched to 7400 Merton Minter Boulevard after receiving reports of an injured child. They found the 10-month-old, identified later as Khamari Khols Lang, with a bullet wound to the head. The baby was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:28 p.m. on Monday.
The infant's cause and manner of death are still being determined by the medical examiner's office. The case is also being treated as a homicide. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday, according to People.
How Did the Accidental Shooting Happen?
Authorities who launched an investigation into the shooting found that the infant was with a three-year-old and a two-year-old inside the parked car. There was also a woman with the children, but it was unclear if she was inside the vehicle at the time of the incident. It was also unclear what the woman's relationship was with the children.
Somehow, one of the older children gained access to the very rear part of the vehicle where the rifle was stored. One of the toddlers gained ahold of the loaded weapon and accidentally pulled the trigger. The rifle fired one round, striking and killing the infant.
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Police are still determining how the weapon was stored. They have yet to release information about the gun owners, per CBS News.
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up for Khamari's funeral by her aunt.
How Many Children Die From Gun Shootings?
Over the past 20 years, 543 children have died from accidental shootings. Among those, 367 were children aged 0 to 5, and 176 were those aged 6 to 10, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.
A separate CDC analysis also found that unintentional shootings made up at least a quarter of all firearm-related deaths within those two decades.
Firearm deaths overall have also risen as one of the top causes of death in kids. As of Monday, 194 children aged 0 to 11 and 938 teens aged 12 and 17 have died of gun-related causes, as reported by the Gun Violence Archive.
