One-Year-Old Shoots Younger Sibling In The Leg
By: Stephen Crews
Updated: February 20, 2011
In the front yard of a home just off Blackwell Dairy Road in Jasper, many toys go unplayed with.
Tricycles are left abandoned. The swing set in the back yard is only moved by the wind.
They are all signs of three children who no longer live there.
"I'm glad it wasn't that bad, but I wish it'd never happened," Cindy Pearl said.
Pearl is their mother. She says the reason her children are now living in foster care is because of what happened earlier this week.
"I didn't know the gun was in the room or it was loaded," she said.
She was getting ready to go to the store when she heard what she thought was the sound of a light bulb busting.
"I turned around real quick and my oldest daughter, Courtney, was saying that 'Bubba shot sissy! Bubba shot sissy!'," Pearl said. "She took off running down the hallway...I ran into the playroom and I [saw] Lexie bleeding from her foot."
Three-year-old Lexie had been shot in the leg. Pearl says the shooter was her one-year-old brother, Blake.
Pearl says the bullet from a .22 caliber rifle went in Lexie's ankle, then came out the back of her leg, then re-entered her thigh area. She says the bullet has not been removed.
"They're very lucky that this child was not killed," Jasper Chief of Police, Danny Patton, said.
Patton says this could have easily been avoided. Unfortunately, he says the parents and caregivers didn't take enough precaution.
"There's one in the chamber and no safety on the weapon," he said. "It was well within reach of those toddlers."
Pearl says she now has to take parenting classes that will probably last at least six months. She says that will determine if and when she gets her children back.
Pearl says this was her third "strike" with officials. The first was when one of her children got ahold of some methadone pills. The second strike came when her boyfriend was accused of hitting one of her children.
