Mariah Davis found the gun under her grandmother’s pillow.
It was loaded – and lethal: The 5-year-old fatally shot herself in the neck with the firearm earlier this month, authorities in Detroit said.
Months earlier, a 4-year-old Detroit boy found his great-grandfather’s unsecured gun and shot his own hand. In that shooting, the child survived.
The shootings were among eight similar incidents in Detroit during the past 17 months, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Wednesday. These are cases in which children shot themselves or others with unsecured firearms, causing serious injuries and even fatalities.
“Let’s call this what it is: an epidemic,” the prosecutor said two weeks ago, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“How many more deaths do we need before strong, swift action is taken?” Worthy wondered, adding: “I realize more than most, that the trend now is to decriminalize. Really, is the death of innocent children and how we deal with it really in this category? Get real.”
Now, she is charging the grandparents who were babysitting Mariah Davis at the time of her death.
The mother and great-grandfather of the 4-year-old who shot himself in the hand are also being charged.
The charges were announced as Worthy’s office prepares for the summer murder trial of a man whose 10-year-old daughter accidentally shot and killed her younger brother with their father’s unsecured shotgun.
“This is a public health issue and not just a crime issue,” Worthy said at a news conference. “These incidents are preventable if adults simply do what they know they should do, and it takes seconds to secure and unload a firearm.”
Mariah Davis’s 65-year-old grandparents, Frederick Davis and Patricia McNeal, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and three counts of child abuse, Worthy said.
Frederick Davis has also been charged as a felon in possession of a firearm.
The grandparents are expected to turn themselves in this week, when they will be arraigned.
The grandparents were babysitting Mariah, along with her baby brother and a 3-year-old neighbor, on May 11, police said.
Just after midnight, Mariah found the loaded revolver tucked under her grandmother’s pillow.
She took the gun into another room and shot herself in the neck, Worthy said. Davis found Mariah injured on a bed and called 911. But the girl didn’t survive.
On Wednesday, Worthy also announced second-degree child abuse and felony firearm charges against Joseph Williams, 80, and Andrea Drewery, 30.
On Nov. 11, Drewery’s 4-year-old son found the gun of his great-grandfather, Williams. The boy shot himself in the hand, was treated at a local hospital and survived.
“It’s alleged that Williams and Drewery had knowledge of the unsecured firearm in the home and it was accessible to the 4-year-old child and his younger brother,” Worthy said.
Williams and Drewery will also be arraigned this week.
Detroit has experienced a rash of shootings involving minors. Days before Mariah Davis died, a 9-year-old boy in the city shot himself in the hand with a gun he found on a lawn.
Between Easter Sunday and May 11, the day of Mariah’s death, a total of five Detroit children were shot, either by themselves or others, according to the Detroit News.
Across the country this year, there have been at least 96 child shootings – when a minor accidentally shot themselves or others – according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-safety group funded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. The advocacy group, which compiles shooting data using news reports, found that 278 such shootings took place in 2015.
A Washington Post analysis found that the pace of toddler-involved shootings has slightly increased this year; as of May 1, there have been at least 23 shootings involving toddlers accidentally shooting themselves or others.
“These aren’t accidents,” Everytown says. “They’re preventable. More than two-thirds of these tragedies could be avoided if gun owners stored their guns responsibly and prevented children from accessing them.”
In Wayne County, 14 shooting cases involving children who found unsecured firearms have been prosecuted since 2005, the Detroit Free Press reported.
On Wednesday, Worthy called for state legislation to “deter irresponsible gun storage practices.”
She also said she plans to meet with the heads of the area’s major hospitals to discuss whether pediatricians can do more to educate the gun-owning guardians of children.
“No matter how much we sugarcoat it or say it’s not so, or cover it up with other stats of crime going down, it’s still an issue we have to address,” Worthy said. “Kids finding guns, usually in homes or cars, and usually these guns are legally owned . . . they’re often unsecured, and most of the time, children know where they are, even if parents don’t think they do.”
The attorney representing Christopher Head, who is charged with murder in the November death of his 9-year-old son, has said Worthy was “overcharging” a grieving father.
According to prosecutors, 9-year-old Daylen Head was killed by his older sister, who was playing with an unsecured shotgun from their father’s closet.
“This really is an example of the most egregious set of allegations that we have seen in recent memory,” Worthy said.
Children regularly played video games on a console that was also kept in Christopher Head’s room, Worthy said. The man’s daughter pulled the shotgun out of the closet in the same room “and mimicked the activity on the video game she had just seen her brother playing,” Worthy said. “The gun discharged, killing her 9-year-old brother.”
A detective, while testifying in a preliminary hearing last year, read the final sentence in Christopher Head’s statement to police: “I love my boy and I’m going to miss him.”
On Wednesday, Worthy addressed questions about the ages of some those now facing charges.
“Some of you will say, ‘Why are we charging someone who’s 80 years old? Why are we charging grandparents who are 65 years old?'” she said at the news conference. “The victims in these cases . . . won’t reach their fifth birthday, their 10th birthday, let alone their 80th birthday.
“We have to be responsible.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Elahe Izadi
