Mom Shot by 4-Year-Old Son: 'We're Not Bad Parents'
A unidentified Washington state woman shot by her 4-year-old son at home last week says she and her live-in boyfriend, who fathered her children, “are not bad parents,” the Kitsap Sun reports.
The 23-year-old woman was watching Elmo with the 4-year-old and his 2-year-old sister when she got distracted for a few minutes by the phone, she tells the newspaper. Suddenly, she heard a bang, realized she had been shot and felt pain.
Fortunately, the 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun her son had taken out of the closet had been loaded by the child only with a birdshot cartridge his father had shown him and apparently forgotten to take back. So she wasn’t seriously injured.
The newspaper allowed her to comment anonymously to protect her son’s identity. So far, no charges have been filed although the accident is still under investigation by the Kitsap County sheriff’s department.
The woman says she expects her boyfriend will either get rid of their firearms or purchase a gun safe in which to keep them.
Ordinarily, the guns are kept unloaded in a closet and the ammunition is kept separate from the guns, she says.
But she was shot when the 4-year-old found the shotgun on the bed, with the the bolt pulled back and locked open, a sheriff’s office spokesman, Scott Wilson, tells the Seattle Times.
“All the kid did was drop the shell in the chamber, touch the bolt release and pull the trigger,” says Wilson. “He had probably seen his dad do it a hundred times.”
Both the child and his 25-year-old father are remorseful, he says.
