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Toddler seen waving a loaded handgun in an apartment hallway [1]

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Date: 2023-01-17

During a broadcast of On Patrol: Live, footage from a Ring doorbell camera shows a toddler playing with a handgun inside an apartment complex in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis.

x #WATCH: A Beech Grove father is in jail after his young son is seen playing with a LOADED GUN on a doorbell camera. Officers say there were rounds in the magazine but, thankfully, not one in the chamber. Very close to a tragedy. Full story on @FOX59 & @CBS4Indy at 6. pic.twitter.com/IDpQks32zp — Eric Graves (@ReporterEric) January 16, 2023

Neighbours were horrified by the sight of an armed toddler.

“He’s playing with what he thinks is a toy, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth,” said Beech Grove Deputy Chief Robert Mercuri. In the doorbell video, you see the child spinning with the gun in his hand, occasionally pointing it at himself. “You see the child pull the trigger. You see where the gun is pointed at,” Mercurri said.

"Watching that video, ohhhh, you can't, you can't unsee it," said neighbor Nicole Summers. "He just kept going, 'pow, pow, pow, pow.'" Summers is the one who called 911 and brought police to Beech Meadow apartments Saturday evening. She said the little boy came to their door and pointed the pistol at her son. Then she saw the gun, too. "My son, he opened the door and then shut it and backed away and he was like, 'Uh...baby with a gun. Get out of here, get out of here!' Then I looked through the peephole. He (the child) was standing in the middle of the hallway and he was just kind of holding it behind his back and I thought...like that's a real gun. I sell guns for a living, so I know what a gun looks like." [...] "He kind of looked down just from the opening of the stairway and was like, 'Look what I got. Ha ha,'" Summers said, "and then when we saw the video of him pulling the trigger and knowing that ... he had pointed that ... gun at my son? It was traumatic."

Last Saturday, police knocked the door of the toddler’s apartment. The toddler eventually answered the door, with his father, 45-year-old Shane Osborne, appearing a few moments after. Shane Osborne stated that he does not have a gun in his apartment. But, shortly after, a neighbour came forward with the aforementioned footage. The police then came back inside Osborne’s apartment, and they found a semiautomatic Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol under a television. The pistol had a magazine with 15 rounds in it, although the chamber did not have a round.

Dennis Buckley, the mayor of Beech Grove, Indiana, released a statement regarding the incident.

I received notification from our Police Chief soon after this incident took place. As with all of you, I’m mortified at what took place and I’m so thankful that no one was hurt, especially the young child. I appreciate the quick action taken by the Beech Grove Police Department to secure the small child and the gun in question. I ask that the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office work tirelessly to secure charges and a conviction against the responsible parties, with maximum penalties. Society shouldn’t accept anything less.

Shane Osborne was arrested for felony neglect of a dependent, and he is due in court on Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, his son is currently living with his mother.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/17/2147621/-Toddler-seen-waving-a-loaded-handgun-in-an-apartment-hallway

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