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 Utah convenience store, police said.
The boy was alone in the car about 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 with the Lehi City Police Department confirmed to CBS News. The incident occurred in a vehicle located 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 up north and died Tuesday morning, police said.
The shooting appeared to be “unintentional and self-inflicted,” police said in a statement.
The gun was under a seat in the car, Livingston said. Investigators do not know if the safety was ever on, she said.
Doug Shields said he was putting gas in his vehicle when he heard the gunshot and then a woman screaming. He went to the car where it happened. He told KSL and KUTV that he heard the mother say the boy found the gun under the seat.
Monday’s shooting happened less than two weeks after a 5-year-old Utah boy died after accidentally shooting himself with a handgun at his house in Santaquin, which is about 65 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Utah does not have any laws to penalize someone for failing to 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 unattended firearms to be stored in a certain way or require a locking device to be sold with a firearm.
No charges are currently pending against the mother of the Lehi boy, Livingston said. The shooting is still under investigation. In Michigan last week police charged the parents of a 9-year-old for violating the state’s safe storage law after their son shot himself in the hand.
In St. Louis, a 4-year-old girl died Monday from a gunshot wound suffered while she was 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.