4-Year-Old Colorado Boy Shoots Himself In Head After Stepfather Leaves Him Unattended At Home

A four-year-old boy shot himself in the head in his apartment in Colorado while he was left unattended.

Colorado Springs Police Department officers arrived at a complex in 3900 block of Harmony Drive on March 12 after a witness reported seeing a boy crying through the window of an apartment with blood on his face. The responding officers found the boy with a gunshot wound to the head and a three-year-old girl, later identified as his sister, behind a locked door inside the apartment.

Personnel from the Colorado Springs Fire Department and AMR treated the young boy for what appeared to be a self-inflicted superficial gunshot wound. He was later transported to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The young girl was also transported to the hospital.

"At the time it did appear that it was a self-inflicted superficial wound," said CSPD spokeswoman Natashia Kerr. "So nothing serious which we were very very thankful of."

No one other than the two children was at the apartment, according to CSPD. Their stepfather left them unattended in the apartment while he drove to the hospital where the children’s mother was admitted for an unrelated procedure.

Christopher Little, 22, the stepfather of the young boy, was arrested for both felony child abuse and misdemeanor child abuse.

Little told police he "understood the seriousness of what he had done and stated how horrible he felt," according to the arrest affidavit.

Upon further investigation, officers found multiple unsecured firearms in the apartment and a bullet hole in the wall where the boy was seen through the window.

The man was booked into the El Paso County jail.