Inset: Evelyn Etress (Blount County Sheriff's Office). Background: Cops investigate after Etress' 2-year-old son was accidentally shot and killed in Hayden, Alabama (WBMA/YouTube).
An Alabama woman is facing charges after one of her young children found an unsecured, loaded handgun and fatally shot a 2-year-old boy in the head, according to authorities.
Evelyn Etress, 40, stands accused of manslaughter, aggravated child abuse and drug charges after her son Noah was killed on Wednesday at their home in Hayden, a small town some 30 miles northeast of Birmingham.
Blount County Sheriff Mark Moon told reporters at a press conference that deputies responded around 10 a.m. to a home on Orchard Circle for a shooting. When they arrived they found Noah suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. Paramedics rushed the boy to the hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.
Investigators later discovered Etress was in the home with the children. The kids were playing in the master bedroom while Etress was elsewhere in the home. She heard a loud bang and ran to the bedroom where she found her son with a gunshot wound and a .380 caliber handgun lying in a closet. Three children were inside the closet at the time of the shooting.
Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey said at a press conference there were six children in the home at the time: two 4-year-old girls, an 8-year-old girl, a 9-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy along with Noah. Etress was the only adult in the home, Casey said.
Casey declined to specify who accidentally pulled the trigger, but said the gunshot wound was "not self-inflicted."
"Crime scene investigators determined that the projectile had gone through the 2-year-old's skull, through the wall, hit the ceiling and then landed on the couch," Casey said.
No other children were injured.
Cops allegedly found at least four firearms that were easily accessible by the children.
Casey said it's imperative that parents keep firearms secure and away from children.
"They're children," she said. "A firearm is not a toy, and it's not a teaching moment for a toddler, and in this case, as we see, that teaching moment came too late."
Young kids often don't know the difference between a toy gun and a real firearm, the prosecutor said.
"When a gun's left out, a child doesn't see danger, they see something familiar," said Casey. "If you think about it, our children play with water guns and with Nerf guns and things of that nature, and these young children just don't know and as a result a misunderstanding can turn into tragedy in seconds."
Etress has since posted a $90,000 bond.