In yet another shooting incident in the US involving a toddler, a 2-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself with his father's gun.
Kevin Ahles had left his son, Kaleb, in the front seat of the car as he got involved in carrying boxes in preparation for a family move to Hernando County, Florida, from Tarpon Springs, northwest of Tampa.
The toddler died yesterday after finding his father's gun in the family car's glove compartment and shot himself, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said.
Kaleb somehow crawled across the seat and opened the glove compartment, where his father kept a .380-caliber handgun, police said.
He then lifted the gun, turned it so that it faced his chest and squeezed the trigger, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Ahles heard a loud pop and sprinted back to the car. Kaleb's mother, Christina Nigro performed Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Deputies responded to the home and an ambulance took Kaleb to Medical Center of Trinity, where he was pronounced dead.
At a news conference, the family's neighbourhood Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said detectives were able to confirm that Kaleb fired the gun and that he was not shot by someone else.
"He probably barely got the trigger pulled," Gualtieri said, adding that it was a lightweight weapon usually carried in a pocket or on a hip.
There was no wrongdoing, Gualtieri said, and the parents are not facing criminal charges. Nobody could punish the parents more than they will punish themselves, he said.
"It appears to be another tragic situation. It's just one of those things that happens where everything happens the wrong way," Gualtieri said.
Yesterday's incident is the latest in a series of high-profile shootings in the US involving children.
Among them, a 4-year-old girl killed her cousin, also 4, in Detroit while playing with a gun found under a bed last January last year.
A 9-year-old accidentally killed a shooting instructor in August last year while firing a submachine gun at an Arizona range and last month a 2-year-old fatally shot his mother in an Idaho Walmart after finding a gun in her purse.
