Pregnant Woman Shot In The Face By 4-Year-Old Son

After a four-year-old boy in Seattle discovered a loaded gun under a mattress in his house Saturday, he picked it up and shot his pregnant mother in the face.

Sgt. Ryan Abbott, from King County Sheriff's Office in Washington, said the child’s parents had no clue he had come across a loaded firearm till he shot his 27-year-old mother. “The mom is 27 years old. She is eight months pregnant. She was laying on the bed watching TV -- her and her boyfriend,” Abbott told CBS-affiliate KIRO.

“He [the child] found a handgun that was unsecured there and he grabbed it, and before anyone knew what happened, heard a pop sound. And the mom was shot on her face area,” Abbott added. No one else was present inside the house at the time of the shooting.

The victim was rushed to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with life-threatening injuries. She was later shifted to a different unnamed medical facility following improvement in her condition Sunday, Susan Gregg, a spokeswoman for Harborview told the Seattle Times.

Police responded to the scene shortly after the shooting, which took place around 5 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EST) in a Skyway apartment complex in Seattle. According to Abbot, the victim’s boyfriend, who was also the child’s father, had carelessly left the gun lying around before he went to investigate the source of a sound that he heard outside the house Friday night. “[The gun] wasn’t secured like it should have been; it was just laying under the bed and it was loaded,” he said.

It was not immediately clear if the firearm belonged to the child’s father. He told the police that he had gotten the gun from a friend or relative. Although an investigation was still ongoing, authorities have run tests on the firearm, which enabled them to determine it was not stolen or involved in any crimes.

“He unintentionally shot his [mother] in the face," Abbott said. “We're reminding anybody with a gun, kids see them as toys. The biggest tragic lesson here is please lock-up your guns so they can't be used accidentally for the wrong reason."

Although the parents of the child have not been charged yet, they could potentially face criminal charges as firearms in King County are required by law to be locked away. “The hope going forward is guns are locked up in people's houses, so something tragic like this doesn't happen. Because now this child is going to be affected forever. And we're hoping and praying the mom is going to be ok in this situation,” Abbot said.

Washington's Initiative 1639, which holds gun owners accountable if their registered firearm is accessed by someone who is not allowed to have a weapon – like a child – and is accidentally discharged, takes effect July in the state. The state’s lawmakers approved the initiative in November.

The news came days after a similar incident, in which a 4-year-old boy shot his mother when she was sitting inside the car with her three other children. The victim survived the gunshot and was reported to be in a stable condition.