This afternoon at 3:06 p.m., Hoover Police received a 911 call from a resident at The Cliffs at Rocky Ridge Apartments. The caller had returned home from work when she discovered an adult family member who was unresponsive. Hoover Fire Department paramedics responded and pronounced the victim, a 31 year old male, deceased on the scene. The victim appears to have suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
Detectives and crime scene technicians have examined the scene, collected evidence and interviewed several individuals. Preliminary information provided to officers indicated that the victim’s two year old son may have accidentally shot his father. The toddler and the deceased were possibly the only two individuals who were present when the incident occurred. Other possible scenarios are being investigated but at this time there does not appear to be an intruder or any third person involved. However, this investigation is still in its very early stages and detectives are not completely ruling out other possibilities.
That was a few days ago but even on Wednesday there seemed to be no other possibilities:
In an email Wednesday to CNN, (Police Detective Gregg) Rector said: "This is not going to be a suicide and so far there is no evidence of an intruder or any other third person involved. I can't, with certainty, rule out other possibilities at this time, but this is looking more and more like a horrible, accidental shooting by a child who found a handgun in the home."
Detective Rector also added this:
"People find it hard to believe that a two-and-a-half-year-old is physically capable of firing a handgun,” Rector said. “Sadly, I found numerous examples. It’s not unheard of.”
Yes certainly NOT unheard of in the land of the 2nd Amendment.
Why in the hell are triggers so snesitive than a young toddler can activate them? Can't gun makers manufacture them so that only an adult can use them? WTF is wrong with people?
ReplyDeleteWayne LaPierre, frothing at the mouth and simultaneously shitting himself, screams, "That father should have had a GUN! WE NEED TO MAKE SURE ALL DADDIES HAVE GUNS!"
ReplyDeleteThey keep calling these events "accidents". They're not accidents.
ReplyDeletePut a toddler in a room with a loaded weapon and someone is going to get shot, and that's no accident.
Unfortunately, though, it looks like the person who should be held responsible for the incident is dead. Assuming that the person who reported the shooting was the child's mother (or stepmother), that person should be questioned carefully about how the gun was stored in the house. What an ugly world we live in to think that a toddler has to live with the fact that he killed his father when he was two years old.
DeleteBeaglemom
How come we never read stories about how having a gun actually saved someone's life?
ReplyDeleteYou'd think the NRA would make sure those stories got out... If they existed.
Then there was the three year old who shot his mother dead while they were in a parked car. Why was there a loaded gun in the back seat of a car with a child? No one wants to call a child a murderer, but hey..they killed another person did they not? You have to wonder how all these child murderers will grow up to be normal people. I wouldn't want a kid who has shot another human being in classes with my grandkids. I know I will get nailed for this, but tough. A kid who sees a gun and thinks it's OK to point it at another person, particularly a person who is important to them, and pull the trigger, has been taught all the wrong things. My grandkids do not have guns, but even when they play with sticks, they know not to point it at someone else. I wish my neighbor kid knew the same..he has toy guns and does not hesitate to shoot the nerf bullets at people (not in MY home or yard, however.) All these things can be avoided, but the NRA evidently enjoys seeing dead adults at the hands of children...yet it's LIBERALS who are ushering in the police state? Right. More guns. More shootings. More dead people. This is not rocket science, NRA. It's just insanity on your part.
ReplyDeleteSally, I agree with you. I don't have children but if I did, I wouldn't want them in class with another kid who had killed someone.
DeleteI'm doing it quietly
ReplyDeleteand I'm doing it respectfully,
but I am laughing.
You're a better person than me, Jonathan. I'm laughing out loud.
DeleteNo matter how you feel about guns, and I'm as anti-guns as it gets because I would ban them all, a man is dead at the hands of his toddler son, whose own life will be fucked up because of something he did when he was too young to know better. Yes, the father is to blame for his carelessness, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a tragic situation. If you can laugh about this, you must be psychopathic.
DeleteFukkk u 8:58
DeleteDoes Alabama have the death penalty for two year olds? Maybe only for black two year olds.
ReplyDeleteYet another incident that won't make a difference to gun control - occupational hazard
Why shouldn't a two year old be able to pull a trigger? Depending what kind of gun it was, some have literally 'hair triggers', which can go off very, very easily. Also, too: maybe the two year old tried to pick up the gun and dropped it, and it went off at that point? Not unheard of.
ReplyDeleteEveryone else has already covered the WTFness of guns so I'll ask the other question. Given the police statement that it was not a suicide did it not occur to the police to swab the child's hands for gunshot residue so there would be no question how this happened?
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to that child.
ReplyDeleteAt 2 1/2 years, children live in a fantasy world. They cannot process facts and cause and effect as adults do.
I hope the child receives appropriate therapy so that he can someday come to terms with the fact that he accidently shot and killed his father. Much depends on how the mother responds. So much tragedy, at such a young age. And for what?
Unfortunately, these incidents get reported in a news cycle, and no one does a goddamned thing to stop it from happening. The father in this case, was in no way a "responsible" gun owner, he put his child AND himself in peril, We need a new word for "accident" when it comes to keeping loaded guns and kids within reach of each other, and a child's reach is far greater than how far he/she can reach unassisted. One case awhile back had two brothers, who knew where the parents "hid" the gun (upper shelf of a closet) and they climbed up a chair, got hold of the gun and one was killed on the spot.
ReplyDeleteHow much does the average gun cost? How much more would it cost if it were sold with a trigger lock? We have to jump through hoops to buy over the counter allergy medicines, spray paint, lighter fluid. We have to produce id and in some states. sign a form.
To get on a plane, we lose certain of our liberties, like the freedom to keep your shoes on, and no one blinks.
Ask someone who buys a gun to lock it, and they're up in arms that their "rights" and "liberty" are taken away for nothing.
This child has to live the rest of his life with the consequences of his father's stupidity. No child should bear that burden, and I hope he gets the help he needs to cope.
So much grief to go round and round. God help us all. Sign me the saint of hopeless causes. Yet still we go on hoping.
ReplyDelete