Sheriff Donald Street urges gun owners to lock up cabinets and keep guns away from kids.
The Mitchell County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday, Jan. 5 responded to an accidental shooting involving a 2-year-old on Deer Park Lake Road.
Deputies responded just after 4 p.m. Reports indicate that the child took a pistol out of a nightstand in the parents’ bedroom and shot himself in the leg. The child was taken to surgery after the incident.
The Sheriff’s Office requested assistance from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations. The investigation is ongoing.
After the investigation, the Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s Office will decide how to proceed.
“I don’t believe anyone intentionally meant to do anything wrong,” said Mitchell County Sheriff Donald Street. “But there is a state law regarding this matter.”
Per North Carolina General Statutes, any person who resides with a minor and stores a firearm in a condition in which it can be discharged and in a place where a child could knowingly access it is guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor if the minor gains access and exhibits it in a public place in a careless, angry or threatening manner, causes personal injury or death with it other than self-defense or uses it to commit a crime.
“Please, parents, grandparents and caretakers of children, walk through your home and stop and think if your guns are secure from kids,” Street said. “The last thing we want to have is a child injured or killed.”