2-year-old shoots dead 4-year-old sister in horror gas station accident

‘He went to work every day. He kept his kids right there beside him ... Their dad was a very beautiful man,’ friend of father says

A 2-year-old boy has fatally shot his 4-year-old sister by accident at a gas station in Chester, Pennsylvania, according to authorities.

The children were in a parked car at a gas station in the city south of Philadelphia on Tuesday, when the shooting occurred at around 10.45am. The girl was taken to a hospital in the area by witnesses, where she was pronounced dead.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer told reporters that “everybody in the community of Chester, in Delaware County, myself included, all of us are just heartbroken to think of what happened to this poor child”.

Chester Police said in a statement that the boy had been “handling a gun inside of a vehicle inside of a vehicle parked at a gas pump and discharged the gun”.

The shooting took place at the Eagle Save Mart in Chester, where the children’s family lives, CBS Philadelphia reported. Bystanders heard a single gunshot from inside the vehicle and the girl was taken to Crozer-Chester Medical Center. Police have not identified the children.

Witnesses say the father was outside the car when the gun fired and that the children were often seen with their dad.

Chester resident Theodore Crumpler told NBC10 Philadelphia that he’s a friend of the children’s father.

“He went in the store. Usually he has someone pumping gas, which would be me or somebody else and I would watch the kids,” Mr Crumpler said. “But I wasn’t here today. I’m so hurt that I wasn’t here.”

“It was a morning ritual, I’d see them every morning,” he added, according to CBS. “He was a good dude. He went to work every day. He kept his kids right there beside him. It’s the number one thing that he did, okay. Their dad was a very beautiful man.”

According to the Everytown for Gun Safety advocacy group, there have been at least 51 unintentional shootings by children this year – leading to 17 deaths and 38 people being injured.

There were 392 unintentional shootings involving children across the US in 2021, leading to 163 deaths and 248 people being injured.

“We just had an article yesterday saying that the crime rate is decreasing, and since that time we’ve had two unfortunate accidents,” Chester resident Carlton Gordy told NBC10.

He added that there’s “nothing for our kids to do” in the area. Mr Gordy lost a child to gun violence 16 years ago on Thanksgiving Day, according to the local station. “You think about your loss and what you could’ve done differently. Split-second – your whole life has changed,” he said.