As more and more shootings occur in the U.S., we have sadly seen that the age of the shooters is going down. Sometimes the act is an accident, sometimes it’s deliberate.
On Thursday evening, a 3-year-old gained access to a gun and fired off a round, which hit and injured two people at an apartment in Lafayette, Lafayette Police Department Lt. Justin Hartman said, per CNN.
After the incident, police responded to a local hospital, where the two victims were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, according to the outlet.
Police identified the victims as the toddler’s mother, whose name has not been released, and Trayshaun Smith, a friend of the child’s mother who was visiting the apartment.
As far as can be discerned, the age of this shooter is the youngest ever recorded. However, it may be surprising to know that there have been many other incidents involving such young children.
One of the most recent occurred on January 6, 2023, when schoolteacher Abby Zwerner was seriously injured when a six-year-old male student shot her while she was teaching in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. In his backpack, the boy had brought from home a 9mm semi-automatic pistol belonging to his mother. At the time, the age of the 6-year-old shooter was considered to be “unprecedented”. This case of a 3-year-old shooter has now surpassed it.
David Riedman is a criminologist and founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database. His research shows more than 2,200 shootings have happened on school grounds over the past 53 years.
Tragic as it may be that a 6-year-old shot his teacher, the Richman Neck incident is not unprecedented.
“This is the fourth case of a 6-year-old with a gun,” Riedman said. “This is very similar to a case in 2000 in Flint, Michigan, where a 6-year-old shot and killed another 6-year-old inside the school.”
In that case, Michigan prosecutors determined the boy was “too young to have formed criminal intent.”
Instead, they charged his uncle with involuntary manslaughter for leaving the gun easily accessible in their home. He served two years in prison.
The other two cases were ruled accidents. “One was a student that had a handgun in their backpack and it fired in the cafeteria,” Riedman said. “The other was a student who appeared to be showing off the gun at dismissal. It fired and struck another student.”
The shooting of Newport News teacher Abigail Zwerner by her 6-year-old student at Richneck Elementary School was different: it was intentional. It captured headlines worldwide and made history in America.
Riedman’s research shows that while there have been accidental shootings by such young children, this is the youngest child to have intentionally fired a weapon at school.
“Yeah this is by far the youngest. It’s really unique in that circumstance,” he said at the time.
Who is to blame when a child—especially one who is only three or six, gets hold of a weapon and opens fire?
Riedman says school shootings involving children as young as Elementary School students are 100% preventable.
“If adults secure their firearms, most school shootings cannot happen,” he said. “Young children cannot purchase weapons on their own, which means they have to take them from somewhere else. And in the case of a young child, that means it’s coming from their house, a relative’s house, a friend’s house.”
In Newport News, police say the mother of the boy legally bought the gun and kept it at home. On April 10, 2023, NBC News published the name of the shooter’s mother, and said that she had been indicted by a grand jury on charges of felony child neglect and a misdemeanor count of recklessly leaving a loaded firearm so as to endanger a child.
Blame falls on the School District as well, as allegedly, they were told repeatedly that there was a gun in the school and they didn’t take greater precautions, especially when multiple people had the same information about the same student carrying a weapon. Abby Zwerner has filed a lawsuit against the school district.
But a crucial question remains: “How does a 6-year-old know how to use a firearm? I don’t know that I can give you an adequate answer,” Chief Steve Drew of the Newport News PD said, “I don’t know how to answer that. It’s unprecedented. I don’t know how to answer that question.”
In this latest case in Lafayette, the Police Department is working with the Markham Police Department in Cook County in regard to Smith’s arrest.
