Indianapolis 2-year-old dead from gunshot wound

UPDATE from IMPD: Detectives have released additional details about this incident. Detectives subsequently learned that the child shot himself, once his mother had momentarily stepped away, after retrieving his mother's gun from her purse that was on the kitchen counter. The grieving mother is cooperating with detectives and after detectives questioned her she was later released.This incident is being investigated as a death investigation.
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Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

INDIANAPOLIS - Unfortunate tragedy strikes a west side community after a 2-year-old suffers a gunshot wound and dies at the hospital.

Just after 9 p.m., last night, officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) were sent to the 5200 block of Alameda Roadd. reference a child shot. When officers arrived they found an unresponsive 2-year-old child suffering from a single gunshot wound. The victim was immediately rushed to Riley Hospital for Children by EMS crews. Despite all the best life-saving efforts of the EMS personnel and medical staff at the hospital, the child tragically died.

Preliminarily, detectives have been told that only the mother and child were at home and downstairs at the time of the shooting. No other injuries were sustained as a result of this incident. Detectives are processing the scene and conducing an investigation into the circumstances that led up to the shooting.

Obviously, this is an extremely difficult environment for the first responding officers and EMS personnel, and should serve as a tragic reminder to all gun owners to think about safety around small children. IMPD would like to offer a few safety tips for gun owners to ensure the safest environment with guns and kids:
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• Take the ammunition out of the gun.
• Lock the gun and keep it out of reach of kids. Hiding the gun is not enough.
• Lock the ammunition and store it apart from the gun.
• Store the keys for the gun and the ammunition in a different area from where you store household keys. Keep the keys out of reach of children.

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