Georgia among states with most accidental shootings involving children, investigation finds

Georgia ranks second in the nation in reported accidental shootings involving young children, according to data analyzed by Channel 2 Action News and its sister stations, an investigation that also found parents can face dramatically different consequences depending on where a shooting occurs.

The investigation tracked more than 2,000 accidental shootings involving children nationwide over the past decade.

It focused on children 12 and younger who gained access to unsecured guns and accidentally shot themselves or another child.

Georgia recorded 140 incidents, including 56 in which a child died. Texas led the nation with 168 reported incidents, while Florida had 128.

Behind those numbers are families still living with the consequences.

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Kaelin Lewis says she remains mentally stuck in 2022, when she was driving along Interstate 85 to drop off her 4-year-old daughter, Kendall, at a babysitter.

“I’m just focused on the road, just driving, just moving along and then I hear noise,” Lewis recalled.

Lewis said she pulled over after noticing something was wrong with Kendall.

“It looked like she was asleep, but her head was leaning to the side,” Lewis said.

DeKalb County police said Kendall got ahold of a gun under a seat and accidentally shot herself.

Lewis was later charged with second-degree murder and cruelty to children.

Her attorney, Jackie Patterson, argues the circumstances do not support a murder charge and said Lewis forgot the weapon was under the seat.

“If the government offered her reckless conduct today ... we will go right in and plead guilty to that because that’s what she’s guilty of,” Patterson said. “She is not guilty of murder in the second degree.”

Lewis is awaiting trial.

Channel 2 Action News identified local news reports connected to the shootings included in the nationwide data and found law enforcement agencies often described the incidents as accidents without charging the adults responsible for securing the guns.

In DeKalb County, however, District Attorney Sherry Boston said her office takes a more aggressive approach to prosecution.

“These are tragic scenarios,” Boston said.

Boston said her office considers the totality of the evidence, including how a firearm was stored and how a child gained access to it, when determining whether criminal charges are appropriate.

“We’re taking it very seriously here in DeKalb, both on a prosecution standpoint, on an intervention standpoint, and on an education standpoint,” Boston said.

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Since 2021, Boston said her office has handled at least 20 cases involving accidental shootings of children. Ten resulted in the death of a child, she said.

“That’s just one too many children that we’re losing when we don’t have to,” Boston said.

The findings highlight how similar incidents can produce different outcomes depending on where they occur and how local prosecutors evaluate the evidence.

Kennesaw State University professor Melissa Osborne has researched accidental shootings involving children for the past decade.

Her research has identified vehicles as a particularly important area for prevention.

“After a home setting, a vehicle is the most likely place for these unintentional shootings of children to occur,” Osborne said.

Osborne said her research also shows many accidental shootings involving children occur during the summer and on weekends, when children are out of school.

Among parents surveyed who reported keeping a firearm in their vehicle, 56% said they did so. Of that group, two-thirds said they stored the gun in the vehicle’s console.

Osborne said additional research could help identify where prevention efforts would have the greatest impact.

“It would help us to know where the needs are and what prevention strategies work,” she said.

Both the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office and Kennesaw State University hold events throughout the year focused on safe gun storage and gun-lock distribution.

For its analysis, Channel 2 Action News included cases in which law enforcement disclosed the age of the child who fired the gun. Reporters found hundreds of additional cases in which authorities did not determine or publicly disclose the child’s age.

The data did not include shootings connected to gang violence, hunting, target shooting accidents or suicides.

For Lewis, the statistics and legal arguments surround a loss she says she lives with every day.

Her daughter would have recently turned 9.

“I never want to be a part of a group like that,” Lewis said. “It sucks, because it hurts, because you have to know you’re never going to see your baby again.”

As she awaits trial, Lewis said she wishes she could go back and change what happened.

“If I could go back in time, I wish I could,” she said. “If I could do things differently.”

Court records show, Lewis’ trial date has not been set.

The research was provided by University of Florida journalism students Drew Bank, Ciara Carle, Carlos Corzo, Krystal Felix, Victoria Perez, Genesis Trujillo, Grace Tucceri, Alexis Vivanco and Jessica Wilkinson.

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