An Indiana family of four remains in crisis Wednesday after a three-year-old girl playing with her father’s handgun accidentally opened fire on her pregnant mother. Authorities say Menzo Brazien was trying on clothes inside a resale shop while the rest of the family waited for him in the car. The little girl apparently found Brazien’s gun in the backseat, where she was seated with her one-year-old brother, and discharged it into the front seat, where her mother, Shaneque Thomas, was sitting.
“There was blood flowing all from her stomach," Hadassah Zirkle, a Plato's Closet employee, said. "Just coming out like water, like a faucet and I screamed someone call 911.”
While Brazien tended to Thomas, reportedly asking her if she was trying to commit suicide, the Plato’s Closet employees took the children inside the store to “shield them” from the bloody scene.
Police are treating the shooting as accidental, holding Brazien responsible for allowing the child access to the gun in the first place.
“She had no idea what she had done and she was very scared,” Det. Sgt. James Bogner said.
“A loaded weapon with children in the back seat: real careless act,” said Merrilville police Chief Joe Petruch. “I hope she survives the gunshot wound.”
The family is now scattered across the Merrilville area, about 40 miles east of Chicago. Thomas was hospitalized with unknown injuries, and her current medical condition is not known. Brazien was arrested for child endangerment, though at this writing, he has not yet been charged. The children remain in protective custody.
Sadly, toddlers accidentally firing guns is a terrifyingly common tragedy in the United States, with a peak average of one per week in 2016.