Toddler Dies After Accidentally Shooting Himself In Head With Family Handgun

Corsicana, TX – A 2-year-old boy is dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head with his family’s handgun.

Kinsler Davis shot himself in his Corsicana home Wednesday around 8:45 pm. The toddler was rushed to Navarro Regional Hospital and then airlifted to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. He was pronounced dead around 11 pm, police said.

Next month would have been Kinsler’s third birthday. The boy was named after Texas Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler.

Kinsler’s father said the boy found the gun in a bedroom while he was in an adjacent walk-in closet. Police said the father thought he put the handgun away, but, still, there was no safety lock on the trigger.

A neighbor said Kinsler’s father used to be a store firearms manager and kept a gun in the house because of a previous break-in. The neighbor also said Kinsler was going through a phase of getting into everything in the house.

“One mistake can cause a tragedy, and that’s what we have here, a tragedy,” neighbor Rickie Holmes said. He went on to say that the father has suffered the ultimate punishment.

“Just losing his child’s going to be enough on him,” he said. “That’s just enough right there.”

Police Chief Randy S. Bratton said his department will continue to investigate the shooting, and will refer to the DA’s office to decide whether the case should be taken to a grand jury. Bratton said the department could list “making a firearm accessible to a child” as a possible charge, but the decision would ultimately be left up to the grand jury if the DA presents the case.

Child Protective Services and prosecutors have been informed of the investigation, but there is no word on whether there were other children in the home.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time a child has died after accidentally getting their hands on a gun. A Michigan 4-year-old accidentally shot himself with his father’s loaded gun. The child was pronounced dead at Allegiance Health Hospital. Last month, a New Jersey boy — also 4 years old — shot and killed his 6-year-old friend while playing “pretend shooting” with a real, loaded .22-caliber rifle.