A 9-year-old boy is dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head after he found a gun in the bedroom of his Chicago home, according to police.
Officers scrambled to the child's North Austin home on Wednesday at 1.45p.m. where they found Ashton Lipscomb lying motionless and bleeding from a head wound.
The child was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 2.29p.m. that afternoon.
The Chicago Tribune reported that officers went to a second-floor bedroom where they found three guns.
One of the weapons, a revolver, had a spent shell casing in the cylinder. It is understood the father told police he was collecting his wife from a hospital when the shooting occurred.
It is unclear if any adult was watching the children at the time of the shooting which happened in an apartment on the 1500 block of North Lorel Avenue, according to police.
In a statement to Newsweek, Chicago Police Department said: "A 9-year-old male sustained a gunshot wound to the head.
"The victim was transported to Stroger Hospital in a critical condition.
"The 9-year-old male was playing with a gun in a residence when he accidentally discharged the firearm and struck himself in the head.
"Detectives are still investigating. We have no additional details at this time."
This tragedy is the latest incident to make the headlines where a child has pulled the trigger after finding a gun in a bedroom.
Last month Newsweek reported how a toddler had accidentally shot his 12-year-old cousin after finding a gun.
The 2-year-old boy, who had not been named, was playing at a house in Octavia Drive South in Alabama, when the incident occurred at around 5:40 p.m.
The little boy is understood to have come across the gun on a bed, picked it up and pulled the trigger, hitting his cousin.
The child was rushed to hospital where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries, according to WKRG News 5.
The 12-year-old's mother told investigators that the gun belonged to her 19-year-old son and her two-year-old nephew had found it on the bed. Police said the shooting was accidental.
And two weeks prior to that, a grandmother was also shot by a young child in an unrelated incident.
In that instance, a 4-year-old child accidentally shot the woman after finding a gun inside an RV, according to police.
The child's family had been traveling home to Virginia when they stopped at the Carlie C's IGA in Erwin, North Carolina, at around 12 p.m. on September 13, abc11 reported.
The child and their grandmother stayed in the RV while the rest of the family went inside the grocery store.
According to abc11, the child located the handgun in the vehicle and when the grandmother tried to get the weapon, it went off and struck the woman in the abdomen.
Erwin Police chief Jonathan Johnson told the station that the woman was taken to hospital and her injuries were not life-threatening.
Correction: This article originally stated that the 9-year-old had been shot by his 5-year-old brother, based on a report from the Chicago Tribune. Chicago PD have since released a statement saying that the 9-year-old boy accidentally shot himself. Newsweek regrets the error.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
