A five-year-old boy accidentally shot his 12-yr-old brother to death after mistaking a loaded gun he found in the woods as a toy.
The dead boy and his siblings, ages five and seven, were in the woods in Atlanta, Georgia, when the youngest of the three found the gun, according to a police statement.
The brothers were playing on a trampoline when the gun was found, 11Alive reports.
Special investigators spoke to the five-year-old who told them he thought it was a toy when he fired it hitting his older brother in the chest.
Paramedics were called to the scene on Saturday just after 7.40pm where they performed CPR on the boy before he was rushed to Wellstar Spalding Regional Hospital where he later died.
Earlier that day, Griffin police said, officers attempted a traffic stop in the area, but three men were able to escape the vehicle and fled “behind houses in close proximity to where this shooting occurred.”
Police searched the area after the men fled and found a bag suspected to contain MDMA, but they found no weapons at the time.
“The children were out here peacefully playing in the backyard on the trampoline,” neighbor Tom Whitehead, who owns an auto body shop in front of the family’s home, told CNN affiliate WGCL.
“The little one found a gun, turns around, thinks he’s playing, says ‘bang bang.’ It was loaded and killed him. Think about that mother. The next day, Mother’s Day, and one boy is dead by the hand of his younger brother.”
In their statement on Sunday, Griffin Police said the shooting was likely a ‘tragic accident’ and the hunt was on to find the person who dumped the loaded weapon in the woods.
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