A 3-year-old reportedly shot an adult, 33, in the back after the child picked up an all ready cocked firearm that was left on a table, police said.
Law enforcement officials responded to a home about 70 miles north of Philadelphia to aid a gunshot victim , according to a news release from the Wilson Police Department. The adult woman said the young child grabbed the gun off the table and accidentally shot her once in the back.
She was rushed to a local hospital for emergency surgery and is expected to survive her injuries, according to police. The three-year-old was not injured. The owner of the firearm, Brian Siegfried, 41, of Easton was said to have been handling the gun while he was at the house. There were reportedly five young children under the age of five in proximity of the gun at the time.
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Police said Siegfried cocked the weapon back before leaving it unattended on the table. His reasoning was that he was tired of holding the gun, police said. The Easton native was reprimanded because he was reportedly the subject of a Protection from Abuse order, which prohibits him from possessing a firearm.
He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, five counts of recklessly endangering another person and persons not to possess a firearm, law enforcement officials said. He was booked at North Hampton County Prison and given a $25,000 bond.
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In March 2023, an unsupervised 3-year-old in Houston accidentally shot and killed her 4-year-old sister in their home. Ed Gonzalez, the Harris County Sheriff, said the shooting was a "very preventable" situation. “It seems like another tragic story of a child getting access to a firearm and hurting someone else,” Gonzalez said at a news conference at the time.
Five adults were reportedly present in the house but had placed the small children in a bedroom unsupervised. “It appears that one parent thought the other parent was maybe watching the other children, when in fact, the two toddlers were left basically unsupervised inside the bedroom,” he said.
The three-year-old began playing with a loaded semi-automatic pistol and fatally shot her sister. The gunshot rang throughout the household and the adults quickly charged into the room and found the 4-year-old dead on the floor.
"(They) picked up the gun, secured it at that point and called 911," Gonzalez said. The accident happened shortly after the Houston Police Department implemented its first gun safe distribution program, which was meant to urge adults to do more to keep weapons out of their children's hands
"Make sure you're securing your weapons, get a gun safe and store it somewhere," the sheriff said. "We've got to do a little bit more, we see far too many tragic situations like this unfold."
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