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Four-year-old boy believed to have shot, killed two-year-old sister in Limón

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June 4th, 2015 (InsideCostaRica.com) A four-year-old boy is believed to have shot and killed his two-year-old sister while playing with a .22-caliber rifle in Palestina de Matina in Costa Rica’s Limón province Wednesday morning.

 

The Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) report that the girl died of a gunshot wound through her right eye.

 

The children were inside the family’s small rural home while their mother was outside washing laundry, when the young boy apparently discovered the rifle on the floor beneath a staircase.  The children’s father was reportedly hospitalized for a snake bite at the time.

 

While investigators believe the shooting was accidental, the children’s mother was taken to have her hands tested for gunpowder residues after investigators on the scene discovered the rifle hidden in a mountainous area some 300 meters from the family’s home.  Investigators have not yet released the results of the test.

 

The family, who is of the Cabécar indigenous group, lives in a remote region about 40 kilometers from Matina.

 

The boy has been placed in the care of child welfare authority, PANI.

 

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  • Ken Morris

    I’m not following the rationale for PANI taking the boy, at least assuming he rather than the mother fired the gun. Insofar as PANI intervenes, it should probably help the family cope with the tragedy and heal as a unit, not break it apart.

    • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

      Maybe because they left a (loaded) rifle where a 4-year-old could get to it? He can’t be but a meter tall.

      • Ken Morris

        I’m afraid that many parents do this, and don’t imagine that a kid less than a meter tall would ever find the gun, much less be able to shoot it. Also, from your story, the parents seem to have believed that the gun was well-hidden, while the father, who I’d guess was the responsible party, was in the hospital at the time for an emergency.

        Negligence? Maybe. But I doubt more negligence than parents leaving exposed electric sockets or rat poison or matches around. And how can we accuse a father of negligence when he’s in the hospital?

        I have to assume that the parents are devastated, as also may be the less-than-a-meter tall boy, and will blame themselves forever. The way to handle this is NOT to remove the kid from the house, unless there is some other reason to do this.

        Basically, parents screw up in all kinds of ways. Most of us are lucky and don’t suffer these kinds of consequences from our screw ups. Neither do we appear to be looking at an armed-to-the-teeth self-styled militiaman crazy, just a guy who left a .22 rifle hidden from his kids he believed were too young to find it and was in the hospital himself anyway. Maybe as a rule he didn’t leave it loaded, just happened to that day after being bitten by the snake.

        I’m a big believer in big government, but I seriously doubt that government bureaucrats taking the kid is the right thing to do in this situation. We seem to be looking at parents who made a tragic mistake, which can happen to any parent, not bad parents.

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