Two young children in Texas are recovering at Cook Children's Medical Center after being shot in the yard of their family home—accidentally, by their only slightly older cousin, police and family say. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram cites a police log and hospital official in reporting that a 7-year-old girl was shot in the arm, while a boy who was either 5 or 7 was shot in the chest. The victims' father, Jordan Olguin (IDed by NBC 5 as Jordan Lewis) says his mother, the children's grandmother, was watching the kids in the home they all share on Thursday morning. The grandmother says the children had been looking for cellphones to play with, and that's when Olguin says the boy apparently stumbled upon a shotgun in a laundry basket. Olguin says his 10-year-old daughter tried to yank the firearm away from her younger cousin, and that's when the gun went off by accident.
"She didn't mean to do it," Olguin tells the Star-Telegram. "She was just trying to keep it away from them. She's scared for my nephew." The grandmother took the children to the hospital, where one child is said to be in stable condition and one in serious condition. Olguin, meanwhile, says he doesn't know whose gun it is or how it ended up in the laundry. "It's a very big shock to me," he says. Police are looking into what happened, and though no charges are expected at the moment (the shooting is so far being considered accidental), charges could come if evidence of a crime emerges. Per the Texas Department of Public Safety, making a firearm available to a child is a Class C misdemeanor that can be upped to a Class A "if the child discharges the firearm and causes death or serious bodily injury to himself or another person." (More gun violence stories.)
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