3-year old Ohio boy gets father's gun and shoots father in side

Walter J. Call III, age 24, was asleep on his couch in his Marion, Ohio, home.  He left his gun loaded and unsecured, with his 3-year old son and 5-year old daughter unattended.  His son then found the gun and discharged it, hitting Call in the side and injuring him.

Call is now being charged with felony child endangerment.

From an article:

Call was shot about 3 p.m. Sunday when his son, who is almost 3, found the gun while Call slept on the couch. Police said the only other person in the house at the time was Call’s 5-year-old daughter. No one else was hurt. 

Collins said Call’s children are staying with family. Police took both the handgun that the toddler found and several other guns from Call’s house. 

Call would be the second central Ohio father charged this year. In May, a 3-year-old Knox County boy found his dad’s gun and shot himself in his head. In that case, the toddler, Lucas Heagren, died. His father, Joshua Heagren, 25, has been charged with endangering a child, a third-degree felony, and with a misdemeanor count of negligent homicide. 

Toby Hoover, executive director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, which lobbies for stricter gun-control laws, said both shootings show that Ohio needs laws to punish gun owners whose firearms fall into the hands of children. 

“Gun owners may have all the good intentions in the world, but they don’t follow through,” Hoover said. “Things like this happen all the time.”

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.