5-Year-Old Kills Self With Sleeping Babysitter’s Gun
If it’s Wednesday, it must be another day where a toddler gets killed by an errant gun.
Authorities in Southeast Texas are charging a babysitter with abandonment after a child in her care fatally shot himself with her handgun while she was napping.
Orange County Chief Deputy Sheriff Clint Hodgkinson said Tuesday that 19-year-old Melissa Ringhardt was babysitting a 5-year-old and 6-month-old in a home in Vidor, about 90 miles east of Houston.
The sheriff’s office told NBC News that Ringhard, who lives with the boy’s family, left her semiautomatic .40-caliber handgun on a coffee table while she took a nap in a bedroom. When she awoke, she found the 5-year-old boy dead in the living room with a gunshot wound, the sheriff’s office said.
The babysitter could get six months to two years in prison, at which time the 5-year-old will still be dead.
