The man was charged with murder and failure to store a firearm safely. (representative image)
The father of a two-year-old boy who shot his mother in the head during a Zoom meeting has been arrested in Florida for failing to keep a gun out of reach of a child.
Police and a prosecutor said 22-year-old Vondre Avery, who was charged with murder and failure to store a firearm safely, was taken into custody Tuesday.
Avery had stored the gun – loaded and unprotected – in a backpack with the children’s television series “Paw Patrol”.
The boy’s 21-year-old mother, Shamaya Lin, was shot with a single bullet at her home in the middle of a Zoom meeting on August 11.
In a phone call to emergency services, one of Lin’s coworkers can be heard saying: “One of the girls died, she was bleeding. She has the camera. Her baby is crying in the back.” has been,” according to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
According to the newspaper, Avery, who was away during the incident, also contacted emergency services upon his return and begged them to “hurry up”.
Police officers arrive to find Avery trying to revive his girlfriend at his apartment in Altamonte Springs, a town north of Orlando. But shortly after paramedics declared him brought dead.
A trial date has yet to be set, according to a statement from District Attorney Dan Fagard.
Incidents of accidental shootings by children are not heard in the United States. In late September, a two-year-old boy accidentally killed himself after a loaded gun was found in a relative’s bag in Texas.
“Every year, hundreds of children in the United States are left unsupervised, loaded guns, in backpacks and purses, or simply in cupboards and nightstand drawers,” in a recent report from Everytown for Gun Safety, a firearms control advocacy group Having said. .
According to the organization, 879 people have died in unintentional firing by minors since 2015 and 114 this year.
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