HAMPTON — A 5-year-old boy is in the hospital after shooting himself in the wrist with his mother’s gun.
The Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations is probing the incident.
Authorities said it happened in the vicinity of Mercury Boulevard on Interstate 64.
At 9 a.m. Tuesday, a 28-year-old woman from Portsmouth was driving her 5-year-old son to a doctor’s appointment when the boy unbuckled himself and “gained access to the mother’s purse, which contained a handgun,” police said.
“The mother claims she was on the phone and did not realize what her son was doing,” police wrote in a news release. “She heard a loud bang, and later discovered her son had shot himself in the wrist.”
The mother drove to a Patient First Center in Newport News to have her son treated. The boy was examined and then taken to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk.
Information on his condition was not immediately released.
Police said the Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office will review the case to determine whether charges are warranted.
