- A man charged in the shooting death of a 2-year-old is facing more charges.
- Prosecutors accused the man of trying to destroy evidence of what happened inside his car.
- The man drove the car away and lit it on fire, prosecutors allege.
A man already facing charges after a 2-year-old boy was shot and killed with his gun is now accused of trying to destroy evidence.
Federal prosecutors in Michigan say the man left his loaded pistol in his car at a gas station in Lansing on October 24, 2023. After he got out of the car, surveillance footage shows a bullet hole appearing in the car’s window, according to prosecutors’ press release.
The footage shows the boy’s mother got out of the car holding her bleeding child and the man’s gun fell onto the ground.
Prosecutors say the man picked the gun — which he wasn’t legally allowed to own — back up, put it back in the car, then got in and drove away.
The boy later died.
In the latest charging documents, prosecutors allege that the man and a separate woman tried to get rid of evidence after the boy’s death. The car was found “burned-out and abandoned” in a field in Lansing, Michigan, prosecutors said in their statement.
The barrel of the gun used in the shooting was later found disassembled in the walls of a house in the town, per prosecutors.
According to online court records, the man’s attorney stopped working for him on Tuesday. No new attorney information has been posted in the court records.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for children
Prosecutors noted that Americans, especially children, are facing an epidemic of gun violence.
“We have far too many senseless, preventable deaths because of children having access to firearms,” said Ingham County prosecuting attorney John J. Dewane. “No child should ever have access to a loaded firearm. No child should ever be in danger of being shot under any circumstances.”
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 2021 was the first year in which firearms were the leading cause of death for children and young adults ages 1 to 19.
While mass shootings make headlines, more than half of gun deaths in 2022 were the result of suicide, according to the CDC.
Roughly 4 in 10 firearm deaths were assaults, CDC findings show.
