Boy, 3, Shoots Brother: Toddler Shoots 18-Month-Old In The Head With Pistol

A boy, 3, shoots his brother in the head with a gun he was able to access at home. The 18-month-old child was shot in his home Tuesday afternoon in Hillsboro, Tennessee, WRCB-TV 3 reports.

The Coffee County Sheriff’s Department confirm that the 3-year-old shot his brother with a.25-caliber automatic pistol. Neither of the two boys are being identified.

The 18-month-hold was rushed to a local hospital. According to Chattanooga Times Free Press, Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves said on Wednesday that investigators were in the process of interviewing family members where the victim is hospitalized at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

Graves shares that the boy was “alert and awake” throughout the incident and is expected to recover. He said authorities are trying to learn how the boy, 3, was able to get a hold of a gun and shoot his brother.

A bullet struck the boy’s little brother in the neck and head area.

Graves isn’t sure at this point if any charges will be made.

“When we get through, everything will be presented to the district attorney and we’ll go from there,” Graves said.

The older brother is staying with other family members at this time, authorities say.

Hillsboro is about 70 miles southeast of Nashville.

Graves is taking this as another opportunity to remind gun owners to keep their firearms secured and away from children.

On Monday, a 5-year-old boy in Houston shot his 6-year-old brother. The victim is in critical condition, but there’s no word on how he’s progressing. The brothers’ uncle, Thomas Gray, said the two loved to play cops and robbers. When the 5-year-old grabbed the firearm, it wasn’t one of the fake guns they usually play with.

“He may have picked up the wrong weapon thinking that it was a toy. But this weapon was not a toy and it was a real gun and he actually pointed it at my other nephew and fired it,” Gray told KHOU 11 News.

The Inquisitr has covered countless shootings of young children. Most of them involve and older and younger sibling — and the victim usually dies. In these cases, luckily, the 18-month-old and 6-year-old boys survived. At least one of them will reportedly recover from his injuries.

In another story on this site eerily similar to this one in Tennesse, an Arizona boy, 3, shot his 18-month-old brother last spring when he found a neighbor’s gun. Unfortunately, the little boy was killed in this instance.

[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]