An 8-year-old boy has died after accidentally shooting himself with a loaded gun left in a car while his mother was inside a convenience store in Utah, police said.
The boy was alone in the car around 7:40 p.m. Monday in Lehi — a city about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City — when he shot himself in the head, Jeanteil Livingston of the Lehi City Police Department confirmed to CBS News. The incident occurred in a vehicle in the parking lot of a Maverick gas station, police said.
The boy was taken to a local hospital in extremely critical condition. He was later airlifted to a hospital in the north and died Tuesday morning, police said.
The the shooting appeared to be “accidental and self-inflicted”, The police say so in a statement.
The gun was under a seat in the car, Livingston said. Investigators don’t know if the security was ever on, she said.
Doug Shields said he was filling his vehicle with gas when he heard the shot and then a woman screaming. He went to the car where it happened. He told KSL and KUTV he heard the mother say the boy found the gun under the seat.
Monday’s shooting came less than two weeks after a 5-year-old Utah boy died after accidentally shooting himself with a gun at his home in Santaquin, which is about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Utah has no laws to punish someone for not doing so secure an unattended firearm and leaving it accessible to an unsupervised minor, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state also does not require that unattended firearms be stored in a certain manner or require that a locking device be sold with a firearm.
No charges are currently pending against the Lehi boy’s mother, Livingston said. The shooting is still under investigation. In Michigan last week the police were charged the parents of a 9-year-old for violating the state’s safe custody law after their son shot himself in the hand.
In St. Louis, a 4-year-old girl died Monday of a gunshot wound she suffered while in a house with three other children under the age of 10 and no adults present. Police are trying to determine who was handling the gun at the time of the shooting.