8/5/2021- 10:45 p.m.
A four-year-old girl has died after being accidentally shot by another child in Chicago on Thursday night, police said.
Makalah McKay succumbed to her injuries at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital less than 24 hours after being shot in the chest.
The loaded gun had been left unattended in a bag at an Englewood home by a man who had not properly stowed it, according to a preliminary report from the Chicago Police Department.
Makalah and a second child, who is also very young, went through the bag before Makalah was shot.
Police have not disclosed the man’s relationship with the children, whether he had a gun license or whether they plan to press charges against him.
A man, believed to have been the one who left the gun in the home, was brought into the district office for questioning.
Makalah’s mother burst into tears when she learned that her daughter had died while she waited outside the hospital with family.
Police were called to a duplex on the 6400 block of South Carpenter Street after reports that Makalah had been accidentally shot at around 6 p.m.
Hours later, officers blocked the front entrance of the building and took photos of the first-floor living room, CBS2 reported.
This is the most recent incident in which children are accidentally shot after being left unattended and with weapons.
Police were called to a duplex on the 6400 block of South Carpenter Street in Englewood after Makalah was shot around 6:00 p.m. on Aug. 5.
On Wednesday, a 5-year-old boy from Utah died after shooting himself. The boy went downstairs at night and played with the gun while his family slept.
Last year, a 7-year-old inadvertently shot her 11-year-old brother in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Fortunately, the boy survived.
There were at least 369 accidental shootings by children in the United States in 2020, resulting in 142 deaths and 242 injuries, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
The pandemic has exacerbated the problem, with an alarming spike in this type of accidental shooting. From May to December 2020, they increased by 30% compared to the same period in 2019.
