A 4-year-old girl is dead after shooting herself with a gun she found in the backseat of her mom’s car as they drove along Interstate 85, according to Georgia authorities.
The incident occurred just after 7:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, Aug. 7 on I-85 northbound at North Druid Hills Road in DeKalb County, police wrote in a news release.
Officers arrived to find Kendal Lewis, 4, dead in the backseat from “an apparent gunshot wound,” the release says. Investigators learned the girl somehow got a hold of a gun and fired it while her 26-year-old mother drove on the highway.
The mother was booked into jail on a charge of second-degree child cruelty, police said.
Authorities have released few other details about the incident.
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A report by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that firearms were the leading cause of death for children, teens and young adults under 25 years old in 2020, outpacing deaths attributed to car crashes, COVID-19 and cancers.
The analysis was based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing more than 4,300 child and teen gun deaths in 2020. Of those, 149 were accidental or unintentional.
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