4-Year-Old Kills Himself With Dad’s Gun

A 4-year-old boy living in Houston accidently shot himself in the stomach with his father’s gun. Jaiden Pratt apparently got ahold of his father’s gun when the elder Marquiez Deshon Pratt was taking a nap on the couch.

NBC News reports that, when Marquiez Pratt woke up to the gunshot, he picked up his bleeding son and carried him outside yelling for help. When police arrived, the father handed his son over to the officers and ran back into his apartment.

Some of the officers attempted to perform CPR on the boy, while others went in pursuit of the father. Jaiden was pronounced dead at the scene.

When police gained entry to Marquiez Pratt’s apartment, they found the gun that had taken the boy’s life as well as marijuana, cocaine, and scales used for weighing out portions of the drugs.

The elder Pratt was charged with injury to a child by omission and possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. MySanantonio.com reported that Pratt had visitation with the boy every weekend, and his mother had dropped him off the night before.

The boy’s mother told the newspaper that, when he stayed with his father, he usually called around 6:00 am every morning. When she didn’t receive a call from him on Sunday morning, she started contacting family members to find out what had happened.

Eventually the boy’s mother was told that she needed to get over to the apartment complex. The gun that Jaiden Pratt shot himself with ended up being one that was marked as stolen.

The gun’s serial number matched that of a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol that had been listed as taken during a 2011 robbery. It is not yet clear how Marquiez Pratt ended up with the weapon.

After the accidental shooting, police described Marquiez Pratt as cooperating and remorseful. Authorities say that the 4-year-old’s father get repeating “I messed up, I messed up.”