A 7-year-old Georgia boy was injured after his 9-year-old stepbrother accidentally shot him with his stepfather’s gun in a parked car outside of a Chipotle, police said.
Police were dispatched to Chipotle at 1650 Scenic Highway in Snellville at 4:06 p.m. on Sunday, PIO Officer Jeff Manley, a detective with the criminal investigations unit of the Snellville Police Department, told Digital.
There, they found a 7-year-old boy had suffered a gunshot wound to his cheek, Manley said.
Manley said the boy was taken to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – Egleston Hospital. He said he is currently in stable condition, but is expected to undergo further surgeries.
The detective confirmed that the two boys in the vehicle were stepbrothers. He said during the time of the incident, one of the boy’s mothers had been inside Chipotle picking up food.
The “gun was unsecured in the vehicle,” Manley told Digital, declining to provide further details on the gun’s exact location.
It’s undetermined if the 9-year-old or anyone else will face any charges in connection to the shooting. “The case is still under investigation,” Manley said.
The detective told Digital that after the shooting, the 9-year-old boy was “visibly distraught” and “very shaken.”
During the incident, some Chipotle employees jumped in to help the young boy after other children came inside screaming that someone had been shot, WSB-TV Atlanta News reported.
“You could see the visible gunshot wound coming out from his ear,” Chipotle employee Johanna Cervantes told the news station. “We just stayed here applying pressure to the wound until the paramedics came. The mom was right there. She was the one putting a towel on his wound.”