A young boy is fighting for his life after neighbors say he found a gun inside a home on Reliance Street in Northwest Charlotte on Wednesday afternoon and shot himself in the head. Neighbors say the boy had removed the gun's clip before it fired, not realizing a round remained in the chamber.
Police responded to an assault with a deadly weapon call in the Thomasboro-Hoskins neighborhood, according to WCNC Charlotte. A medic on scene confirmed the boy suffered life-threatening injuries, and as WCCB Charlotte reports, neighbors say he became curious after seeing the gun and started playing with it before it went off.
One neighbor described the boy as “a good boy” and not a troublemaker, according to the same report, and warned that parents need to keep guns out of children's hands. That warning echoes a mechanical misunderstanding that firearm safety experts say fuels many accidental shootings involving kids: removing a detachable magazine does not disarm a gun, because a live cartridge can remain seated in the firing chamber until the slide or action is manually racked to clear it, per a report from a gun shop owner cited by WCNC.
A Pattern Emerging in Charlotte
This is not an isolated case. Less than two months earlier, on July 19, a 7-year-old boy in Southwest Charlotte accidentally shot himself after finding an unsecured firearm inside a home on Knight Court, the same station reported. Together, the two incidents point to a recurring problem of children gaining access to loaded guns inside Charlotte homes.
The stakes extend well beyond these two cases. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department statistical reports recorded 426 juvenile victims of violent crime involving firearms and 90 juvenile firearm suspects citywide in 2023, per WCNC's earlier coverage. State public health data cited by Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools shows firearms are the leading cause of injury-related death among children and youth in North Carolina.
What the Law Requires of Gun Owners
Under North Carolina General Statutes § 14-315.1, leaving a dischargeable firearm stored in a way that lets an unsupervised minor under 18 gain access is a Class 1 misdemeanor if that minor is injured or killed as a result, according to the North Carolina General Assembly. In past Charlotte child shooting cases, CMPD officers have gone further, charging adult guardians with felony offenses such as involuntary manslaughter alongside misdemeanor failure-to-secure charges when children accessed loaded guns.
State and local agencies have responded with prevention efforts. North Carolina runs NC S.A.F.E., short for Secure All Firearms Effectively, a statewide public education campaign aimed at preventing accidental child gun injuries and deaths through safe storage practices, according to the NCDHHS Division of Public Health. Locally, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department offers free firearm cable locks to residents who request them at neighborhood division offices.
Nationally, the scale of the problem is significant. Nearly 360 children under 18 unintentionally shoot themselves or another person every year across the United States, and research shows at least one-third of youth gun suicides and accidental deaths could be prevented through secure storage, according to Everytown Research & Policy. For now, the boy from Reliance Street remains in critical condition as investigators work to determine how he gained access to the gun.
