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.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has issued an emergency public health order temporarily suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County.
“Extraneous materials” triggered nine recalls in 2022 of more than 477,000 pounds of food regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service — triple the number of recalls tied to food contaminated with toxic E. coli bacteria.
The death of a Massachusetts teenager after his family said he ate an extremely spicy tortilla chip has led to an outpouring of concern about the social media challenge.
Amid offers from several countries, Moroccan officials said they are accepting international aid from just four countries: Spain, Qatar, Britain and the United Arab Emirates.
Danelo Souza Cavalcante stole an unlocked van with its keys inside sometime Saturday night about three-quarters of a mile from the northern perimeter of the search area where hundreds of law enforcement officers had been searching for him.
About 146,000 U.S. auto workers are set to go on strike this week if General Motors, Ford and Stellantis fail to meet their demands for big pay raises and the restoration of concessions the workers made years ago when the companies were in financial trouble.
