Boy, four, shoots sister dead

A four-year-old boy found a loaded gun in his family’s house and fired it through the front door, killing his five-year-old sister and seriously wounding another boy.

An older sister had seen the child pick up the semi-automatic handgun in the house on Saturday night and had rushed the other children outside to try to protect them, said officials in Landover, Maryland, USA.

But the bullet went through the door, hitting them, said a Prince George’s County police spokeswoman.

The two wounded children stumbled across the street and collapsed in a neighbour’s driveway. Kimberly Brice was pronounced dead after arrival at a hospital.

The bullet had hit the boy, age seven, in the back and then hit Kimberly.

The injured boy was expected to survive. Police believe he is other children’s half-brother.

“It’s a terrible situation that probably could have been avoided,” the police spokeswoman. “It’s quite obvious the gun was not secured.”

She said the four-year-old cannot be held criminally responsible, but the parents, or other adults connected to the house, could potentially face charges of leaving the young children unattended or leaving the gun where the children could get to it.

“We’re still trying to determine where the parents were” police added. The older sister who was with the children was 10 years old.

The mother of the three siblings went to one of the hospitals after the shooting. A man also lived in the house.