A 4-year-old Texas girl was fatally shot by her 3-year-old sister in a Houston-area apartment Sunday night.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzales said Monday morning that the victim was pronounced dead at the scene after her sister reached for a semi-automatic handgun and fired a single shot. Five adults were present in the apartment, but no one appeared to be supervising the girls. Gonzales said the shooting, which occurred around 8 p.m., “appears to be unintentional.”
The incident is under investigation.
“At some point, it appears that one parent thought the other parent was perhaps looking at the other children when, in fact, the two young children were left basically unsupervised inside the room,” Gonzales said in a video posted to Twitter.
The sheriff called the shooting a “tragic situation” that was “preventable.”
It is unclear if charges will be filed. The Houston County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The identities of those involved have not been made public.
( ‘Systemic failures, egregious bad decision-making’ allowed Uvalde school shooting to happen: Texas House )
Sunday’s murder marks the second time this year that a 3-year-old boy in Texas has fired a fatal shot, according to a gun safety group. Everytown for Gun Safety. A young boy in Wharton, Texas reportedly found a gun in his mother’s nightstand and committed suicide on February 3. Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Nearly two dozen of those shootings were fatal. More than 150 people were reportedly killed by weapons unintentionally fired by children in 2022.
