A girl younger than 8 is recovering in the hospital after being shot at a home just north of Obetz, and police say the teenager responsible is now facing a reckless assault charge. Officers were called to Nationwide Children's Hospital late Tuesday night after the girl arrived with a gunshot wound, launching an investigation that led them back to the house where the shooting happened.
According to ABC6 On Your Side, police were called to Nationwide Children's Hospital on a report that the girl had been brought in with a gunshot wound. Officers then went to a home on Villa Drive just before 10 p.m. Tuesday, where they found the scene of the shooting, as first reported by myfox28columbus.com.
Investigators Call the Shooting Accidental
Police said the girl is under 8 years old and that the shooter is a teenager, per the same ABC6 account. Officers spoke with witnesses at the hospital as part of the investigation, which determined that the shooting was accidental. Despite the injury, the young girl is expected to recover, according to that report.
The teen is being charged with reckless assault, the station noted. Ohio law, under Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.14, prohibits negligently causing physical harm to another person by means of a deadly weapon.
Part of a Troubling Pattern for Ohio Kids
This is not the only recent case of a child caught in an accidental shooting in the Columbus area. In a separate incident described by NBC4 Columbus, a young girl was recovering after she accidentally shot herself with an unattended firearm in the Weinland Park neighborhood. And in July, a father was charged after a toddler on the city's east side found an unsecured gun and fatally shot himself, according to court records cited by ABC6 On Your Side.
The broader numbers underscore why these incidents keep drawing scrutiny. A study from Nationwide Children's Hospital examined 279 unintentional firearm fatalities involving children younger than 15 between 2009 and 2018, finding that most incidents, 64 percent, occurred at the victim's own residence. More than half of those fatalities were self-inflicted, and when storage details were known, 92 percent of the firearms involved were stored both loaded and unlocked.
Firearms are now the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19 in the United States, according to the same research. Ohio Capital Journal reports that Ohio's firearm death rate among children rose 58 percent, climbing from 2.6 per 100,000 between 2015 and 2019 to 4.1 per 100,000 between 2020 and 2024, citing KFF data. Nationally, firearm-related deaths among young people increased 68 percent over a comparable period, and deaths among children 17 and younger have outpaced motor-vehicle deaths in that age group since 2020, the outlet reported.
