A young child, aged 4 according to the press, was accidentally killed on Wednesday by another child with a gun in the suburbs of Chicago, according to a press release sent Thursday by the police to Agence France-Presse. This drama, another illustration of the very heavy price paid by the United States for the spread of firearms, took place around 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the police discovering that a child had been “accidentally hit by a firearm by another child from the same household,” according to the statement.
The father of the fatally injured girl, the legal owner of the handgun used and who called for help, told investigators that the pistol was stored high up in a closet, police said. the locality of River Grove, in the western suburbs of Chicago (Illinois, north). According to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, the child who died was a 4-year-old girl.
This kind of tragedy is not uncommon. Every year, 19,000 children are killed or injured by guns, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, which campaigns for more restrictions on guns. In 2020, weapons became the leading cause of death among young people aged 1 to 19, with 4,368 deaths, ahead of car accidents and overdoses, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control ( CDC).