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Charges have been filed against two people in separate shootings involving 2-year-olds in Chicago within hours of each other, CBS Chicago’s Megan Hickey reports.
In one case over the weekend, a 2-year-old girl got a hold of a loaded gun and shot herself in Rogers Park.
Hickey said it’s unclear whether either of the two people charged actually fired a weapon. But both were charged with endangering a child by having an unsecured, loaded gun.
Police in Chicago say they got a call shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday from Rogers Park.
They say a little girl found the loaded gun and shot herself. Dispatch audio said a woman called police and said her daughter got a hold of her purse – which had a firearm in it.
The 2-year-old girl was wounded in the hand and listed in good condition in a hospital in Evanston, Illinois.
Neighbors didn’t have much information Monday, other than saying they heard the gunshot.
Chicago Police said Monday that a 22-year-old woman was charged with two misdemeanors in the Rogers Park incident – one count of endangering a child, the other for having a gun without a valid Firearm Owners Identification card.
Meanwhile, 22 miles away and three-and-a-half hours later, police said another 2-year-old was shot.
Police said that at around 10:30 p.m., a 2-year-old boy was playing in a bedroom when a gun went off.
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He was also hit in the hand and taken to a hospital in fair condition.
Police wouldn’t say who fired the gun in that case. But a 24-year-old man was charged with endangering a child and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
“Two 2-year-olds,” community activist Andrew Holmes lamented Sunday night. “Get a lock. Lock these guns down. Search these homes – because these two children may have permanent damage.”
Why are Chicago toddlers getting access to loaded guns? And what’s being done about it?
A 2021 study from Lurie Children’s Hospital found that 22 percent of city parents reported having a firearm at home – and nearly half of those Chicago parents store them loaded.
Meanwhile, in January, two different laws went into effect.
One of them requires the state to develop a public awareness campaign on how to safely store a gun. Local jurisdictions have taken it upon themselves to host demonstrations on how to do that.
The second law requires that safe gun storage be added to the safety education lessons taught in Illinois schools. But that law would only provide school-age kids with instruction and wouldn’t have prevented these toddler cases.
CBS Chicago reached out to the Illinois Department of Public Health for an update on the public awareness campaign, five months after the law went into effect.
Late Monday, the station still hadn’t heard back.
