Both of Naleyna's parents have pleaded guilty in connection with the December 2021 shooting death of their 11-month-old daughter at her father's mobile home near Granite Falls. Jesse Kitson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and unsafe storage of a firearm; less than two weeks later, Naleyna's mother, Arabella Watts, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter.
According to HeraldNet, the shooting occurred on the evening of Dec. 4, 2021, while Kitson was making dinner. Watts had brought her two-year-old son and Naleyna to the mobile home. Police believe Kitson left a loaded Remington 1858 .44-caliber revolver on the coffee table. Charging papers describe possible ways it could have fallen, including being pulled down by a child or caught in a coat, but the exact sequence remains uncertain in the reporting.
Naleyna was just weeks away from her first birthday. HeraldNet's report on the case, which first detailed the charges against the couple, noted that Kitson and Watts were both charged with first-degree manslaughter and unsafe storage of a firearm. The charges were filed in January 2024, two years after Naleyna's death.
Guilty Pleas Came Nearly Three Years After the Shooting
Watts, who was 27 in November 2024, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter on Nov. 5, 2024, the same HeraldNet report states. Kitson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and unsafe storage of a firearm just under two weeks earlier. As part of the resolution, prosecutors dropped the unsafe storage allegation against Watts, along with a separate unlawful firearm possession charge.
Washington's unsafe-storage statute, RCW 9.41.360, took effect in July 2019 after voters passed Initiative 1639, and it allows for a second-degree felony conviction when a minor accesses an improperly stored firearm and causes injury or death. The statute itself does not mandate a specific method or location for storing a gun, according to the text published by the Washington State Legislature.
Broader Data on Accidental Shootings
KIRO 7 and its sister stations conducted a nationwide review of media accounts of accidental shootings involving children, defining young children as those 12 and under. The review offers one media-based account of the issue; its findings should be distinguished from state health data collected for specific categories of violent death.
Snohomish County prosecutor Jarett Goodkin told the station that criminal accountability may still follow even when a person has lost a child. He also said the possibility of prosecution may not change how people store firearms in the first place.
National data compiled by Everytown Research shows the scope of the broader problem: from Jan. 1, 2015, through Dec. 31, 2024, at least 3,580 unintentional shootings by children 17 and younger resulted in 1,382 deaths and 2,317 injuries. The research group found that 2023 had the highest number of such incidents on record, surpassing 400 for the first time, before a 12 percent decrease in 2024. Children five and younger accounted for a third of both shooters and victims in that decade of data, and unintentional shooting deaths caused by children were 41 percent higher in 2020 and 2021 than in the two years prior.
What State Death Data Can Show
The Washington State Department of Health says its Violent Death Reporting System collects data on unintentional firearm-related deaths, along with suicides, homicides and other categories of violent death. The department's cited overview does not give child-specific totals or age bands, and it describes death data rather than injury counts. Those limits mean the overview alone cannot directly compare this infant's case with findings grouped by a different age range, such as KIRO 7's definition of young children as 12 and under.
Other Washington Cases Echo the Pattern
Granite Falls is not the first Washington community to grapple with this kind of tragedy. In 2012, a Marysville police officer was charged with manslaughter after his three-year-old son used a gun to fatally shoot his seven-year-old sister, though the jury could not agree on whether the officer had been criminally negligent, per The Seattle Times. Two years later, a three-year-old Everett boy climbed onto his father's dresser and accidentally shot himself with his father's firearm.
In 2016, an Everett man was sentenced to two months in jail for leaving a loaded Ruger .380-caliber firearm near his three-year-old son, who shot himself, HeraldNet's reporting on the Granite Falls case noted. In 2022, prosecutors charged a Monroe prison official with a felony after her son shot and killed himself with her gun. The Seattle Times also reported that almost two-thirds of gun-owning households left firearms unsecured, and that in 2014 alone, the state recorded one death and six injuries from accidental shootings of children younger than 18.
