Girl, 5, Finds Gun Under Pillow, Fatally Shoots Herself: Police

DETROIT, MI – A 5-year-old found a gun hidden under the pillow of her grandparents' bed and fatally shot herself around midnight Tuesday on the city’s northwest side, police and family members said.

In an email to the Detroit Free Press, Detroit police Sgt. Michael Woody said the bedroom of the home was upstairs, where two other young children, ages 1 and 3, were sleeping.

The other children were not injured in the shooting, which occurred in what The Detroit News said was a dilapidated neighborhood with a number of boarded-up and and abandoned homes.

The girl, who relatives have identified as Mariah Davis, is latest child nationally to stumble on a loaded gun and end up dead.

About 30,000 people are killed by guns a year, and last year, at least 30 of those who died in accidental shootings were 5 or younger, according to the gun-control advocacy group Everytown For Gun Safety, which relies largely on news reports to track shootings.

In Detroit, the child is the latest to die in a string of deadly child shootings since Easter Sunday, when a 3-year-old girl on Detroit’s west side died of multiple gunshot wounds.

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In the latest Detroit case, the grandparents were babysitting the girl and her siblings, and were not in the room when the accident happened, Shawnte McMichael, the victim's aunt, told WDIV-TV.

The girl’s grandmother was cooking downstairs when the gun discharged, McMichael said.

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“They heard the shot and her granddaddy ran in there like, ‘What was that?’ And she was laying on the bed with her dolls," McMichael told the TV station.

Mariah was pronounced dead at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit.

Both grandparents were questioned and released by police, according to WDIV.

» Read more about national trends on The New York Times.

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