MUNCIE, Ind. – A Muncie man routinely left his Glock on a dollhouse inside his girlfriend’s house, he told police.
On Monday afternoon, his girlfriend’s 4-year-old son found the gun and shot himself in the head in front of his 2-year-old sister. The baby boy was pronounced dead at IU Health Memorial Hospital.
Police responded to the S. Burlington Drive address at 12:11 p.m. Monday after receiving a 911 call that a child had committed suicide. Emergency medical personnel arrived to find the boy with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police questioned 19-year-old Joseph Jackson, who described himself as the boyfriend of the boy’s mother. His girlfriend, Alycia Smith, 22, was a mother of two: a 4-year-old boy and his 2-year-old sister.
Jackson said he helps Smith with day-to-day childcare; he had been living with her for about a month, according to court documents.
Jackson said he left his gun, a 9mm Glock 19, on a dollhouse on the second floor. He has a retention holster, he told investigators, but “always” placed the gun on the dollhouse without the holster.
He was on the first floor when he heard a “pop”, according to court documents, followed by screams from his girlfriend. He ran upstairs and saw the 4-year-old bleeding from the face; he carried the boy downstairs as someone called 911.
Jackson told police the boy liked to climb on things around the house, including the dollhouse. The boy could see the gun through the “windows” of the dollhouse, police said. Investigators noted that the weapon was stored approximately three feet off the ground, making it accessible to the boy.
Police wrote in the probable cause affidavit that neither Jackson nor Smith took “precautionary measures to protect the firearm from the children,” according to court documents.
Smith told police she was in the bedroom with her children when she heard the shot. Her son was playing in an office chair and rolling around the room. She turned to find him holding the gun and saw him shoot and collapse, according to court documents. Her 2 year old daughter was there when it happened.
Smith told police she knew Jackson had a gun and had left it on the dollhouse “at least 10 times” before. She also said they had an argument over where Jackson kept the gun and told police he had “previously left the gun in areas where his children could access it.”
Investigators noted that the first floor of the residence had a large gun safe that “could have been used to securely store the firearm,” according to court documents.
Jackson and Smith were formally charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in the death and neglect of a dependent.
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