Moments after two children were playing with toy guns, one of the children picked up a real rifle in a western Alaska home and fatally shot the other child, authorities said.
Alaska State Troopers were notified by both tribal and local police Sunday of the child’s death in Mountain Village, the statewide law enforcement agency said.
Troopers responded and found “two children were playing with Nerf guns when one of them picked up a rifle and shot the other one,” the troopers said in an online statement.
Village health aides declared the child dead, and the body will be sent to Anchorage for an autopsy.
The child got the rifle inside the home where the shooting occurred, and an adult was inside the home at the time, troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told the Anchorage Daily News.
No criminal charges have been filed, and McDaniel said the investigation is ongoing. The Anchorage newspaper reported it’s rare for a gun owner in Alaska to be prosecuted when someone is killed or injured when a child obtains the weapon.
Few details about the children involved, including names and ages, will be released “due to the size of the community that this tragic event occurred and our requirement to protect juvenile information,” McDaniel said.
Mountain Village, a Yup’ik community of 600 people who practice a traditional subsistence lifestyle, is located about 470 miles (756 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage.
China on Monday said more than 10 U.S. high-altitude balloons have flown in its airspace during the past year without its permission.
It was the fourth object shot out of the sky by U.S. fighter jets in eight days, along with ones over Alaska and Canada and a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
Mourners gathered Saturday at a New York City mosque to remember a family of four from Queens who were killed while visiting relatives in Turkey.
The impact of inflation continues to burden families on a wide range of issues, such as childcare.
A U.S. military fighter jet has shot down an unknown object flying off the coast of Alaska.
Rescuers pulled several earthquake survivors from the shattered remnants of buildings Friday, including some who lasted more than 100 hours trapped under crushed concrete.
Hundreds of thousands of school age students went missing from the public school rolls during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and have not been accounted for since.
The Pentagon says the Chinese balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years."
The city of Memphis is preparing to discipline at least seven additional police officers who were involved in the killing of Tyre Nichols.
Senior reporter Tara Rosenblum spoke to Major General Denise Donnell of the New York Air National Guard about the operation to take down the alleged espionage device.
