A 12-year-old is facing murder charges in the shooting death of a 10-year-old brother in Texas, authorities said.
The shooting occurred on Saturday, May 4, at the 10700 block of Stidhman Road in Conroe, Texas, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Deputies responding to the call found the boy with a single gunshot wound to the chest and transported him to a hospital, where he died.
The motive of the shooting is unclear. The 12-year-old is being held at the Montgomery County Juvenile Detention Facility.
Update: 9:49 pm-MCTXSheriff Investigating Fatal Shooting Conroe TXBased on the investigation conducted by the…
Posted by Montgomery County Sheriff's Office on Saturday, May 4, 2019
This is the latest incident of a child being accused of killing another in recent weeks.
A 6-year-old Georgia girl died last month after her 4-year-old brother accidentally shot her in the head in a car outside their home, authorities said.
The girl, identified as Millie Drew Kelly on a GoFundMe site set up for the family, was shot last month at their subdivision about a 40-minute drive northwest of downtown Atlanta, the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office said.
The siblings were in a car in their driveway, preparing to go to the boy’s baseball game, when the vehicle failed to start. The mother exited to find out what was wrong with the car, authorities said.
The boy took a gun from the car’s console and accidentally fired it while his mother was outside, striking his sister in the head, the sheriff’s office said.
“Our hearts break for this family and we hope God puts his healing hands around them during this difficult time,” Sheriff Gary Gulledge said in a statement posted to Facebook on April 11.
“We want to remind everyone to keep their firearms unloaded and secured in an area away from children to ensure that this never happens again,” Gulledge noted in a Facebook post.
Accidental Shooting Deaths Halved
Accidental firearm discharges killed 486 people in 2017, down more than 50 percent since 1997, according to mortality data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, gun sales increased more than 80 percent between 1999 and 2017, according to The DataFace, a San Francisco data analysis company, which based its estimates on FBI background check data.
There appears to be a mix of factors behind the phenomenon.
Epoch Times reporters Jack Phillips, Petr Svab and The CNN Wire contributed to this report.
