A 5-year-old Kentucky boy received a .22 caliber Crickett rifle for his 5th birthday, and today his 2-year-old baby sister is dead. The boy’s mother stepped away for just a moment – a moment in which she learned that the gun, previously thought empty, and available to the boy, still held a shell. The Crickett website features three .22-caliber rifle models for kids, with shoulder stock colors ranging from pink to red, white and blue swirls. “My first rifle” is the company’s slogan.
David Pakman argues that the mother should be held responsible for negligence, however it is being viewed as just a ‘tragic accident’ This is yet another example of negligence certain to be held up along-side the ‘praying parents’ Herbert and Catherine Schaible and the mother who recently lost all four of her babies to a fire in her absence. Of course as you know, the latter, Hope Hawkins is being held on four counts of homicide by child abuse, while the former pair, and now the Kentucky parents garner sympathy.
The Kentucky children’s grandmother, like the rest of the family was philosophical. She said that she is devastated, but comforted knowing that her granddaughter Caroline Sparks is in a better place. “It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess,” she told WLEX. “I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.”
Caroline Sparks’ death comes after two other incidents in recent months involving young children shooting others. In early April, a 4-year-old boy in Tennessee shot and killed a 48-year-old woman, and just days later, 6-year-old Brandon Holt was killed in New Jersey after being shot in the head by his 4-year-old playmate.