Two 5-year-old boys died in accidental shootings involving improperly secured guns in Memphis within days of each other, and one of the children's fathers is now facing criminally negligent homicide charges. Court records show Tamir Washington had just come home from school, eaten, and started his homework before he found his father's loaded handgun sitting on a bedroom bed and shot himself.
According to Law & Crime, Tamir was found suffering a gunshot wound in the front yard of his family's Baysweet Drive home. The Shelby County Sheriff's Office says he was rushed to Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in critical condition but ultimately died there after accidentally shooting himself inside the home in southeast Shelby County. His father, 24-year-old Marquavious Washington, was charged with criminally negligent homicide, aggravated child neglect and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, according to WREG.com. A Shelby County judge has since lowered Washington's bail, per localmemphis.com, which reported he was initially held after deputies responded to the scene.
A Second Child Lost Days Later in Hickory Hill
Just weeks apart from that case, police responded to a shooting on August 1 in the 3900 block of Innsbrook Drive, per WREG.com. The Memphis Police Department says a five-year-old boy was accidentally shot by a juvenile who had located a gun, and the boy later died at a hospital from his injuries. TN Under the Gun reports the shooting happened in Hickory Hill, near Riverdale Road, when two brothers gained access to an unsecured firearm and one unintentionally shot the other.
Both deaths came as Le Bonheur Children's Hospital has spent years treating young gunshot victims in Memphis. Dr. Regan Williams, the hospital's trauma medical director, told WREG.com that one of the two boys died from a community-violence firearm injury and the other died because of unsafe gun storage — she believes both categories of child firearm injuries are preventable. Williams said that, of young gunshot victims arriving at Le Bonheur, roughly 70 percent are hurt in community-violence incidents while about 30 percent are injured because of unsafe storage in the home.
Fewer Injuries Overall, but Storage Accidents Persist
There is some encouraging data buried inside the grim numbers. Williams told the station that the number of children treated at Le Bonheur for gunshot injuries has dropped by about 40 percent over the past two years, a decline she credits to community-violence reduction efforts combined with firearm-storage education. That local trend lines up with citywide numbers Hoodline previously reported: Memphis Police Department figures for the second quarter of 2026 showed a 60 percent year-over-year drop in citywide homicides and a 36 percent drop in violent crime overall.
Even so, separate data reported by localmemphis.com shows Le Bonheur treated 110 children for gunshot wounds in 2025, and hospital orthopedic specialists say more than a third of those shootings were accidental. This is not an isolated problem for Memphis families. In March, Hoodline reported that 33-year-old Ashley Kimmons was accidentally shot and killed in southeast Memphis after her 4-year-old son gained access to an unsecured gun during a birthday gathering on East Shelby Drive — a case that prompted police to renew public safety warnings at the time.
Free Locks Available, but No State Law Requires Them
The Memphis Police Department currently provides free cable gun locks at five stations: Tillman, Crump, Ridgeway, Airways and Mt. Moriah, according to WREG.com. Citizens can request a free lock from the front desk officer at any participating station. Shelby County separately runs a home-delivery request program that has distributed more than 5,000 locks to residents who ask for one online, per localmemphis.com's earlier reporting, and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security distributes its own free 15-inch rubber-coated cable locks with a 4-pin cylinder deadbolt in all 95 counties through its Safe Store Tennessee program, per TN.gov.
Deputy John David Myers, a firearms instructor, demonstrated proper installation of a cable gun lock on a semi-automatic pistol for WREG.com's investigation. He explained that a lock installed through the magazine well makes the gun inoperable and prevents installation of a magazine, while a lock simply hung around the trigger does not actually lock the gun and would still allow it to be fired. Myers also noted that a simple padlock can secure a firearm if it is installed correctly through the weapon, and he recommends a miniature gun vault for anyone who needs quick access to a firearm; those vaults can be opened within seconds using a code or biometric hand scan, though they can also hold a loaded gun ready for use.
Despite those resources, Tennessee has no law requiring any of it. According to the Giffords Law Center, the state does not mandate safe firearm storage and has no broad child access prevention statute holding gun owners accountable for keeping weapons locked away from minors. Child access prevention laws vary widely from state to state, and Tennessee's absence of one leaves compliance entirely voluntary. Hoodline reported in May that an investigation by the Institute for Public Service Reporting found Tennessee's child gun-death rate runs roughly 36 percent above the national average, part of a broader picture in which nearly 360 children nationwide unintentionally shoot themselves or others each year.
Basic guidance from firearms instructors remains the same regardless of what device a household chooses: guns should be kept unloaded and locked away, the chamber should be cleared before securing a firearm, and ammunition should be stored separately from the weapon itself. As Rodnesha Walker put it in WREG.com's report, parents should hide guns, put them in a safe, and keep them away from children altogether. Responsible gun owners, Deputy Myers and others stress, must ensure firearms are untouchable by anyone who should not be handling them — a standard two Memphis families are now grieving having fallen short of in the same week.
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