Police said Thursday that a 16-month-old boy died when his 5-year-old brother opened fire in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana. weapon involving small children USA in 2023 there are already dozens of them.

Authorities said they were alerted by a bystander to a shooting at an apartment in Lafayette, nearly 100 kilometers north of Indianapolis; when the officers arrived at the apartment, they found the dead child.

Officers determined the bullet was fired by the victim’s five-year-old brother, “who was able to access a gun in the apartment,” Lafayette police said in a statement.

According to the non-governmental organization Everytown for Gun Safety, there were more than 60 cases of unintentional shooting of children in the US in 2023, resulting in 25 deaths and 39 injuries.

The autopsy of a young boy, Isaiah Johnson, confirmed that his death was the result of a gunshot wound.

According to police, there was also an adult in the apartment when the five-year-old child fired. The police did not give details about how the child was able to get hold of the gun.

Lafayette Police Chief Brian Phillips said only that an investigation was underway to determine who owned the weapons, adding that no arrests had been made.

There are about 400 million guns in the U.S. that account for more than 45,000 deaths — homicides, accidents, and suicides — in 2020, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While this year marked the first time firearms were the leading cause of death for young people aged 1 to 19, with 4,368 dead, ahead of traffic accidents and drug overdoses, according to CDC data that does not include a child in Lafayette.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}