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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a commemorative event on the occasion of the Russia Ukraine war one year anniversary, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Transgender youth in Tennessee would be banned from receiving gender-affirming care under legislation currently headed to Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.
Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh has denied killing his wife and son but admitted lying about when he last saw them alive while testifying in his own defense.
Cheddar News' Shannon LaNier spoke with Meredith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, about what it takes to run of the largest Girl Scouts organizations in the country and the only one that is 100 percent urban. The group serves 25,000 girl with the support of 3,000 volunteers. Maskara gave viewers a sneak preview of the cookies soon to be available across the city.
The prosecutor in the case against an Arizona rancher accused of killing a Mexican man on his land near the U.S.-Mexico border alleged during a court hearing Wednesday that the rancher fired that day on a group of about eight unarmed people.
The winner of a $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot — the fourth largest in U.S. history — has come forward to collect the prize, state officials said Wednesday.
