TULSA, Okla. — Two children are recovering after an accidental shooting near 27th and Garnett.
Tulsa police told 2 News a nine-year old and a 12-year-old each got shot while playing with a loaded gun that went off Tuesday morning.
“Somehow they were probably messing with the gun, or there was a gun involved," Ofc. Danny Bean said. "How it went off at least a couple times, we’re not sure of right now.”
While both kids are expected to be okay, it's not the first injury from a child found with a gun in Green Country.
An accident in Sand Springs on Oct. 6 proved deadly when a pre-teen allegedly shot another child at their grandmother’s home.
Local News
Child killed in accidental shooting in Sand Springs
A month before that a Union High School athlete Jarek Watie suffered a gunshot wound to the face while at a party.
“I mean, I can’t see out of my left eye," Watie told 2 News on Sept. 13 after being released from the hospital. "I can’t hear out of the left ear, and the left half of my lips are numb. So when I’m talking, it’s like talking out the right side of my mouth.”
"(This) comes up very often,” Emily Farmer from the COPES wing of Family & Children's Services told 2 News Tuesday afternoon.
COPES is Tulsa County's 24/7 mental health crisis hotline and mobile response team. Farmer specializes in suicide prevention advocacy, and points out the damaging toll of gun violence in kids.
She also advocates a need to educate Oklahoma families better about the risks associated with guns in homes, "really just sharing information about safe gun storage, that some of these things may have been preventable if those firearms were stored safely or access was restricted."
The solutions, Farmer said, are simple: Store, secure, and save.
"Prevention is possible when the gun is stored in a place not everyone knows where it’s kept away from the ammunition, and hopefully using a gun lock or a gun safe,” Farmer added.
COPES offers tools like gun locks to families for free. Click here to learn more.
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