2 year old Greenville, South Carolina boy, Kayden John Stuber accidentally shoots self dead after finding grandmother’s gun in her purse. Another mounting gun fatality.
A two-year-old boy in South Carolina has died after accidentally shooting himself with a gun he reportedly found in his grandmother’s purse.
Kayden John Stuber was being watched by his grandmother and aunt when he shot himself in the head the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said.
According to WYFF, deputies tried to aid the Greenville County toddler before paramedics arrived, but Kayden died on the way to the hospital.
Sheriff’s deputies received a call of a gunshot victim at a residence on Dronfield Drive around 1.35pm.
Kent Dill, of the Greenville County Coroner’s Office, told ABC News that Kayden’s grandmother and aunt were watching him while his parents were at work.
‘Apparently, he went into the grandmother’s purse that was sitting on the bed and, in some way retrieved, was handling the gun when it discharged,’ Dill said.
Deputies tried to revive the toddler before EMS arrived and loaded him into an ambulance.
However, he was pronounced dead at 1.58pm on the way to the Pediatric Emergency Department of Prisma Health Systems.
‘Preliminary results show the cause of death as gunshot wound of head. The manner of death is accident,’ the coroner’s office report read.
An autopsy had been scheduled for Friday.
Kayden’s grandmother, ‘Kayden was my life. He was my baby’.
The tragedy follows, the boy’s grandmother, Bekki Gunter recently quitting her job so she could look after the child after the boy’s mother went back to work- greenvilleonline reported.
Kayden’s parents, Tala Gunter and Ryan Stuber, lived in Tim and Bekki Gunters’ home. Kayden was their only child and the Gunters’ only grandchild.
‘Kayden was my life. He was my baby,’ the boy’s grandmother said.
Not immediately clear was whether charges would be filed as an investigation is ongoing.
On Thursday afternoon neighbors gathered on the street off of Dronfield Drive as more than a dozen police cars lined the sides of the road around the home.
‘We’re just in shock and very sad right now,’ neighbor Jonah Stauffer said.
According to the state’s Child Fatality Advisory committee’s 2018 annual report, one third of South Carolina households with children 18 years old or younger have a gun in the home. More than half of those firearm owners keep their guns loaded and accessible, the report states.
A study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that guns were the second-leading cause of death for children between ages one and 19.
Firearm-related injuries were responsible for 3,143 deaths, or a little more than 15 percent of childhood deaths.
Researchers found that one in three homes in the US with children under 18 had a gun, and nearly half of them kept the firearm unlocked and load.
To date there have been 288 children killed or injured by a gun in 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles data on shooting incidents.
