Girl, 5, told to ‘shoot bad guys’

An Arizona grandfather has been arrested and accused of leaving his five-year-old granddaughter alone in the desert with a loaded and cocked .45-calibre handgun and the instruction to “shoot any bad guys”.

Paul Armand Rater, 53, was booked into the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix on suspicion of two counts of felony child abuse and one count of felony child endangerment stemming from the incident on Sunday.

Rater and the child left their home in Buckeye, about 48km ) west of Phoenix, in a pickup truck early on Sunday afternoon and the girl was reported missing four hours later.