A 3-year-old toddler was critically wounded July 29 when she was accidentally shot by her 7-year-old brother in a second-floor apartment on the 600 block of 46th Place SE, Washington, D.C. police say.
The toddler, Dalis Cox later died at an area hospital. An autopsy is pending to establish the cause of death.
“We have no reason to believe that it’s anything other than an accident, so what we’re looking at is how the gun got into the house,” Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said at a news conference on July 30. “We believe it was a young child that got their hands on a gun.”
According to news reports, Dalis, her brother, mother, an unrelated adult and a teenager were in the apartment at the time of the shooting. Reports also confirm that the gun was not registered.
“My heart goes out to Dalis and her family,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said at the news conference. “The gun should have never been in a place where it could have been accidentally or otherwise used to put a little girl in danger.”
