JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 6-year-old boy died Monday in Jacksonville after he was accidentally shot in the head by a 9-year-old who was handling a gun when it went off, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
The shooting happened around 2:45 p.m. at a home in the Duclay neighborhood on Shady Pine Street South.
According to JSO, an adult was in the home at the time of the shooting and they were taken downtown for questioning. JSO said it is trying to learn how the child got the gun, but it’s too soon to tell if the gun was properly secured.
People in the neighborhood said they feel heartbroken by the tragedy.
“Terrible, it breaks my heart,” an anonymous neighbor told News4JAX.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident.
According to data pulled by News4JAX, 15 children have been shot so far this year, four of them were fatal and three of them, including Monday’s shooting, were considered accidental.
In two of the accidental shootings, police arrested adults for child abuse and other charges.
A representative with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital said parents aren’t doing their part to make sure kids can’t get to these guns.
NCH did a study in June showing most unintentional gun fatalities when a child shoots another child involve boys, happen at the child’s home or a friend’s home, and the guns were stored loaded and unlocked.
“If your child is going to visit a friend’s house or a relative’s house, you know, go ahead and ask, you know, are there firearms in the home?” Nichole Michaels, a principal investigator with The Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said. “And if there are, how are they stored? Normalizing it so that parents are asking about firearms, the same way that they ask about allergies in the home or pets in the home, you know, just making those conversations really normal, can go a long way toward, you know, opening up these discussions and preventing these tragedies from happening.”
The shooting remains an ongoing investigation.