Greenville toddler dies after accidentally shooting himself, police say

A 3-year-old boy died Friday night after unintentionally shooting himself, according to a Greenville Police Department release.

The incident happened around 10 p.m. in the 200 block of Beech Street, the news release said. Emergency officials rushed the boy to ECU Health Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Investigators learned that the boy found the gun inside the home and accidentally shot himself. Police do not expect to bring charges in the boy’s death.

“The incident has been ruled a tragic accident,” according to the police department release.

Police are not identifying the child to allow his family “to make proper notifications.”

If a child is able to access a gun in their home and harm themselves or someone else, their parents or guardians can be charged with a class 1 misdemeanor. North Carolina’s firearm storage laws don’t require gun owners with children to lock their guns, but they do require the firearms to be stored in a way where children cannot access or fire them.

In response to comments on Facebook, Greenville police wrote they are still investigating, but believe the firearm storage law was followed in this instance.

“The adults in the home are believed to have taken precautions to keep the weapon out of reach,” the department wrote.

A Pink Hill, N.C., man was charged with involuntary manslaughter and negligent child abuse in January after his 3-year-old son was fatally wounded by accidentally discharging a loose gun, The News & Observer previously reported.

About a quarter of all unintentional gun deaths nationally occur among people under 18 years old, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

From 2011 through 2020, 64 children in North Carolina were killed in unintentional shootings, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System.

That’s a rate of 2.5 deaths per 1 million children, the seventh-highest in the country among the 24 states with published data through the CDC.