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.
The same day, U.S. health officials reported the first known case in which the new coronavirus was spread from one person to another in the United States.
While the unit that killed Nichols has been disbanded, advocates say nothing less than a cultural change in law enforcement broadly will provide the safety and liberty Black people demand.
Video showing five Memphis officers beating a Black man was made public Friday, one day after they were charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols.
About 185 death-row inmates are suing Texas over its solitary confinement policy.
Pet food maker Pedigree is offering metaverse users a chance to foster a pet from the real world — by starting in the virtual one.
About 185 death-row inmates in Texas are suing the state over its solitary confinement policy.
The U.S. plans to make it easier for gay and bisexual men to give blood by easing restrictions on groups that typically face higher risks of HIV.
Newly released video shows the husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fighting for control of a hammer with his assailant during a brutal attack in the couple’s San Francisco home last year.
The FBI served a globally recognized hacking group a dose of their own medicine and shut the network down.
An exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial brings back to Germany a diverse set of everyday objects that Jews took with them when they fled the Nazis.
