5-year-old boy finds revolver, shoots baby brother dead in rural Missouri: sheriff
The distraught mom, Alexis Wiederholt, at first thought her infant child had been wounded with a paintball gun after she found him inside the Elmo, Mo., home around 9 a.m. Monday, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White said. The shooting appears accidental but is under investigation, he said.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, January 20, 2015, 10:58 AM
- A
- A
- A
KETVA 9-month-old died after he was shot in the head by his 5-year-old brother after the boy found a revolver inside a home in Elmo, Mo., Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White said.
A 9-month-old baby boy was shot dead in his playpen after his 5-year-old brother found a loaded revolver and fired the weapon, the sheriff in Missouri’s rural Nodaway County said.
The boy’s mother, 24-year-old Alexis Wiederholt, originally told police the infant had been shot in the head with a paintball gun after she found the mortally wounded child just before 9 a.m. Monday in the master bedroom of the Elmo home, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White told the Daily News.
It was White himself who took the 911 call from a distraught Wiederholt.
“When law enforcement and EMS got there, they determined it was not a paintball gun but a .22-caliber Magnum handgun and that the 9-month-old was struck it the head,” White said.
KETVNeighbor Kathy Armentrout rushed over to the home after she saw police and paramedics arrive on scene. She took care of the boys as the 9-month-old infant was flown to a Kansas City hospital.
The baby was flown some 120 miles south to a children’s hospital in Kansas City, where he was pronounced dead.
Wiederholt’s three other sons, including the 5-year-old shooter, were home at the time and uninjured.
The 5-year-old boy found the loaded weapon on a shelf built into a headboard of the bed inside the Scott St. home, White said.
KETVThe home is located in a rural area of Missouri near the Iowa border.
The home is owned by Bill Porter, Wiederholt’s father and the children’s grandfather, a neighbor told KETV.
“I just noticed there was something was going on, so I just went up there and got the kids and brought them here,” family friend Kathy Armentrout told the TV station.
Authorities believe the shooting was accidental, but an investigation is under way and all information will be turned over to Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice. A child fatality review board, composed of law enforcement officers, EMS, and county health officials, among others, will meet Wednesday afternoon to discuss the shooting at the behest of Rice, White said.
The rural agricultural county, of some 22,000 people scattered among 900 square miles along Missouri’s border with Iowa, is a place “where everybody has firearms,” White told The News.
Hunting and outdoor sports are “really commonplace around here,” he said, but so should gun safety.
“That’s where the whole thing falls apart,” he said. “Guns themselves are not dangerous. On their own, they have no ability to do anything. It’s when people leave guns lying around and young children can have access to them. Little children are fascinated by all kinds of things.
“It’s just a horrible thing for anybody to have to go through,” White added.
