A five-year-old girl accidentally shot herself dead after her mother locked her inside their home to go shopping, police said yesterday.
The youngster was found with a fatal wound to the head after officers responded to reports of gun shots at the house in New Orleans at around 10.50am on Sunday.
The child was rushed to hospital where she was placed on life support but was later declared dead.
The girl’s mother, Laderika Smith, 28, is to be charged with second-degree murder, according to officials.
Police say her negligence resulted in the death of her daughter.
A spokesman for the New Orleans police department said: “A preliminary investigation indicates the child was home alone and had somehow come into contact with .38 revolver and accidentally shot herself in the head.”
Smith is understood to have returned home to find the little girl lying on a bedroom floor of their home in North Galvez Street in the 7th Wardwith a gunshot wound to her forehead.
A neighbour told the New Orleans Advocate the woman came out screaming: “Lord help me, my child is dying.”
Another neighbour told the newspaper the mother called him over as he was cleaning his shoes on the porch and he saw the girl gasping for air.
He told the paper: “I seen it. She was next to a pillow, on her back, a hole in her head.
“I ain’t touch her. I just look at her. I said, ‘Who shot your daughter?’ She said, ‘I don’t know’.”
