(Washington) In the US state of Ohio, a 2-year-old child accidentally killed his 8-month-pregnant mother by shooting her in the back with a loaded, unstowed pistol, local police reported.
Laura Ilg, 31, called for help on the afternoon of June 16, saying she was hit at her home in Norwalk by a bullet fired by her son, Commissioner David Smith told local media.
“She explained that she was 33 weeks pregnant and her 2-year-old accidentally shot her in the back with a gun,” he told the News 5 Cleveland affiliate. from ABC.
Despite the rapid intervention of the emergency services, the young woman died in hospital and the child she was carrying could not be saved, said the police chief.
Still conscious when the police arrived, she explained that her son had managed to enter the master bedroom, usually locked, while she was doing laundry, and had started to play with the weapon.
Police also found a 9mm pistol on the bedside table along with two other loaded firearms.
The victim’s husband, absent during the tragedy, told the police that the weapons belonged to him, according to local media.
This tragedy is the latest in a long series in the United States, a country with 400 million firearms for some 330 million inhabitants.
In March, a 3-year-old girl accidentally killed her 4-year-old sister with a gun near Houston, Texas, despite the presence of five adults, including their parents, in the house.
About 40% of U.S. households own guns, a large portion of which have children, according to the Pew Research Center.
And less than half of those households keep their guns securely, according to a study by Johns Hopkins University.
The Norwalk tragedy took place despite the presence of security devices, said the Norwalk police chief, who urged people with firearms to take extra precautions, including using “padlocks, safes and to “at least leave (weapons) unloaded”.