According to police, an Oklahoma teen accidentally shot his mother and then killed himself.
A 16-year-old boy was playing with a pistol in the living room of their Del City home, according to the Del City Police, when the gun accidentally went off around 11:22 p.m. Saturday.
The bullet then his 36-year-old mother, Stephanie Rowshawne Jennings, in the head.
“The bullet traveled through the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen and struck Stephanie in the head,” Del City Police Maj. Bradley Rule reveals. “She fell to the floor right then and was deceased.”
Rule says the boy, who the police have yet to identify, ran to the kitchen immediately and “saw what he did and ended up running outside to the street where he turned the gun on himself.”
When police officers arrived at the scene, they discovered the teen lying in the street with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Rule says the gun was resting beside him.
“It was terrible,” says Rule. “I don’t know if he was messing with it or playing with it. He wasn’t cleaning it. It was a firearm in the house.”
He was transported to OU Medical Center where he later died of his injuries.
“We had somebody sitting in the living room when it happened,” says Rule.
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“The eyewitness told us what happened and what the eyewitness told us lined up with the evidence on the scene. I don’t think [the witness] knew his intention was to kill himself. I think he knew he was upset over what happened and they were trying to calm him down and then of course he shot himself.”
“It was an accident,” says Rule. “I’m sure he was so distraught over what he had done for whatever reason he decided to take his own life. The whole thing is terrible.”
The initial 911 came from a neighbor who heard the gunshot on the street. Police say the investigation is ongoing.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises that the safest home for a child is one without guns. The most effective way to prevent unintentional gun injuries, suicide and homicide to children and adolescents, research shows, is the absence of guns from homes and communities,” according to the Healthy Children website.
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