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Police in Vero Beach, Florida, announced Tuesday they will not file criminal charges against a teen who fatally shot his friend in what police say was an accident.
The incident happened on January 30 when a 14-year-old boy and two of his friends were playing with a firearm and it went off while one of the teens was holding it, striking the 14-year-old, WPTV reported. Though emergency responders attempted to save the teen's life, he died from his injury.
The shooting occurred amid a trend of gun deaths among children and teens. According to a 2021 report from the Children's Defense Fund, gun deaths in this age group rose in 2017 to its highest level in 19 years, and since then they have remained elevated. Other recent incidents include a 17-year-old in Louisiana who has been charged in connection to the fatal shooting of his pregnant girlfriend, who was also 17, on March 12.
In the Florida shooting, the 14-year-old boy's mother told police that, while she was aware her son was ordering gun parts off of the internet to build his own, she did not know he had access to ammunition, according to WPTV. The report added that shortly before the boy died, he had woken his mother up, telling her he accidentally shot himself.
Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey said in a news release that, at first, the victim's friends who were present during the shooting confirmed this story. However, throughout the investigation, police concluded one of the friends was holding the gun.
"According to statements made, the boy did not know the firearm was loaded," Currey said.
After more than a month of investigating the incident, police decided they would not seek criminal charges.
"This was a terrible and tragic accident and there was no criminal intent by the juvenile that shot the victim," Public Information Officer Darrell Rivers said in an email to Newsweek.
In 2019, nine children and teens died from a gunshot every day in the U.S.—equating to one death every two hours and 36 minutes—according to the Children's Defense Fund report. That year, more children died from gun violence than from cancer, pneumonia, influenza, asthma, HIV/AIDs and opioids combined.
The report partly attributes this to the fact that many firearms in the country are not stored properly, increasing the risk of accidents. It said guns are in a third of households with children and almost half of those households do not store their guns safely.
In the Vero Beach boy's case, it was a do-it-yourself or "ghost" gun, which is made up of parts that are relatively easy to obtain and largely unregulated, that led to the fatal accident. Everytown Research & Policy reported in 2020 that the rise of ghost guns is the "fastest-growing gun safety problem facing our country."
They are called "ghost guns" because the parts' sales are not subject to background checks, with the Everytown report saying this means the guns "undermine federal and state firearm laws," making them a "scourge on the United States."
"The Vero Beach Police Department would like to remind those with firearms in their possession to always keep their firearms locked up and kept away from children," police said in a statement.
Update 03/15/22 2:15 p.m. ET: This story was updated to add more information.
