Atlanta police say 6-year-old Ja’Mecca Smith found a loaded gun in sofa cushions in her home early Saturday morning and shot herself in the head, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
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Atlanta police spokesman Sgt. Warren Pickard said Sunday that 25-year-old Demarqo Smith has been charged with reckless conduct and involuntary manslaughter. The first-grade honor student was described by her family as an angel who loved the Disney film Frozen and enjoyed playing with her siblings.
But the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says that its own review of accidental gun deaths revealed a number that was nearly twice as high: It found 100 children had been killed in unintentional shootings between December 2012 and December 2013. The responding officers said they were originally told the father accidentally shot his daughter.
The family has created a GoFundMe in hopes of covering funeral expenses.
Milling said Smith is very upset and she claims investigators got some of the events twisted.
Hers marks Georgia’s fourth accidental gun-related death of a child in the last six weeks, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Since Georgia has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation, which allow more and more guns in circulation with increasingly easy access, these bad tragedies will only continue to escalate. It is not an accident, but totally preventable.
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Ja’Mecca Smith was the youngest of seven children, the baby of the family. This is simply unacceptable.
