Gun violence strikes 2 Michigan children in 2 days; toddler dead
Two young Michigan children were shot within 14 hours of one another, the latest apparent victims of a statewide youth gun violence surge that at last check had claimed twice as many lives since the onset of the pandemic.
A 2-year-old was shot and killed Friday night at an apartment complex outside Grand Rapids in Kentwood, news media outlets in the area reported, citing police. A 5-year-old boy was shot in the hand at a home in Detroit Saturday morning and is expected to survive, police said.
Both shootings are under investigation.
The shooting in Detroit’s Dexter-Linwood neighborhood, on Burlingame, was accidental, police said — the result of the boy getting a hold of an unsecured weapon or someone in the house shooting him, Detroit Police Chief James White said at a news conference early Saturday. The person responsible for the weapon is in custody, he said.
“We have to do a better job of maintaining our weapons and weapon security,” said White. “At a time when a kid should be getting up and eating cereal and watching cartoons, he’s being rushed to the hospital because he’s been shot. We have to do better.”
On the west side of the state, Kentwood police on Saturday had released few details about the toddler's shooting death the day before.
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In late 2022, a Free Press analysis found the number of juveniles shot and killed in Detroit had tripled pre-pandemic numbers, due in part to increased access to weapons and a failure to secure them, experts said. Statewide, twice as many children had been killed by gunfire since 2020 when compared with the three years before the pandemic. Both increases far outpaced adult gun fatalities.
Approximately a third of the more than 43 juvenile shootings in Detroit last year involved younger children and unsecured weapons, the Free Press found.
Detroit police have at various points offered free gun locks in response to the bloodshed.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Toddler shot, killed in Kentwood near Grand Rapids; boy, 5, shot in Detroit
