The young thirty-year-old was eight months pregnant and was accidentally shot in the back by her two-year-old son. More than 48,000 people were killed by guns in the United States in 2021.
The drama dates back to Friday June 16, but we only found out about it this Thursday through police and local media. In the small northwestern town of Norwalk, a two-year-old child accidentally shot and killed his eight-month-pregnant mother with a loaded, unarmored gun found in his parents’ room. Neither the young woman, who was shot in the back, nor her unborn child survived.
Laura Ilg, 31, called the emergency services herself around 1 p.m. When police arrived at the scene three minutes later, they broke down the door to the house and found the victim lying on the ground upstairs, still conscious but badly injured, his son crying by his side, David Smith said. , Norwalk Police Chief, to local media.
Laura Ilg told officers her son managed to break into the normally locked master bedroom while she was doing laundry and started playing with the gun. “She explained that she was 33 weeks pregnant and that her two-year-old child accidentally shot her in the back with a gun,” the police chief told Cleveland’s News 5.
Found several weapons
“Laura Ilg was transported to Fisher Titus Medical Center where an emergency C-section was performed,” police said. However, despite the swift intervention of emergency services, the newborn did not survive and was pronounced dead less than an hour after the caesarean section. The young woman succumbed to her injuries around 5:10 p.m. later that afternoon, the police chief said.
“If you don’t know, Laura and our unborn son Talisen passed away on Friday. There are no words to describe the pain and loss I feel. She was, is and always will be the love of my life,” her husband posted on Facebook Monday night.
On site, the police first found the murder weapon, a SIG Sauer P365, a handgun, a cartridge case and a charger. Another 9mm pistol was found on the bedside table, along with a 12-gauge shotgun and an airsoft rifle, both loaded, inside the house. The victim’s husband, who was absent during the tragedy, told police the guns belonged to him.
The police chief complained that none of the weapons had been properly seized and urged extreme caution. “Security locks, safes, there are millions of varieties and they are not that expensive. At least keep your guns unloaded,” commented David Smith. The police also said that the results of the investigation would be forwarded to the local prosecutor’s office and that no charges had been filed.
death certificate
This tragedy is the latest in an endless line in the United States, where more than 500 people are accidentally killed by guns each year. In March, a three-year-old girl accidentally killed her four-year-old sister with a gun near Houston, Texas, even though five adults, including her parents, were at the home.
Although the exact number of weapons in circulation in the country is not known, with a population of around 330 million it is undoubtedly well over 400 million. According to the latest global assessment by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey (SAS), there were approximately 393 million firearms in circulation in the United States in 2018.
But since then the Covid has sent sales skyrocketing. As others plundered shelves of toilet paper, many Americans rushed to gunsmiths – classified as “essential businesses” – and more than 2.3 million guns were sold in the month of March 2020 alone. Almost 60 million additional guns were sold in the country between 2020 and 2022.
Logically, this increased requirement drives up the number of deaths, which also breaks records: 48,830 in 2021, the latest year available, an increase of 8% compared to 2020, a year already considered “historic” by health authorities is classified. About 54% of these deaths are suicides. Official data shows that firearms have become the leading cause of death among American children and teenagers in 2020, ahead of traffic accidents.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 40% of American households own guns, and a large proportion have children. According to a study by Johns Hopkins University, less than half of these households keep their guns safe.