A little over a week after a young boy shot and killed his younger sister, another similar tragedy has occurred after a teen shot his 6-year-old sister in the chest. The difference is that this young girl survived.
The Sun-Sentinel reports that a 13-year-old boy accidentally shot his 6-year-old sister in the chest with a handgun at their Oakland Park home over the weekend. It was later revealed that there was no supervision at home at the time of the shooting.
The accident was reported by Justin Latourette, a neighbor, after he heard a gunshot a little before 7 p.m. He recounted the scene of when they were wheeling the young giri into an ambulance:
“Her shirt was bloody, and you could see through a piece of gauze that she had a hole in her chest above the heart. Her eyes were wide open in a blank stare, like she was in shock. I’ll never forget that look.”
Thankfully, the young girl who has now been identified as Angela Divin is said to be improving after she was listed as critical over the weekend.
Statistics from the Children’s Defense Fund suggest that accidents like this one aren’t uncommon, and that parents need to do a better job of securing guns while educating children about the danger of firearms. In fact, the Fund found that one-third of all households with children under 18 have a gun in the house, and more than 40 percent of those households don’t store said guns in a inaccessible, or locked, location.