The emergency call came in just after 8:30 a.m. Thursday: A 3-year-old boy shot himself in a small Colorado town.
An ambulance brought the boy to Yampa Valley Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead just after 11 a.m., according to the Routt County Sheriff’s Office.
The boy’s father is a police officer with the Steamboat Springs Police Department, Steamboat Today reported.
“We are deeply saddened at the loss of one of our officer’s family members,” Police Chief Cory Christensen said in a statement. “We will continue to support the officer and his family through this difficult time.”
Christensen continued: “The loss of any life is tragic. The loss of a son or daughter to a horrible accident is something no parent should have to endure.”
The Routt County Sheriff’s Office is conducting a “death investigation” into the incident, along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Authorities have not released the name of the boy or his father, nor details of the circumstances surrounding the incident, including who owned the gun, whether the gun was issued by the police department and if the boy was alone at the time of the shooting.
After the shooting, the boy’s father and a friend drove the 3-year-old toward Steamboat Springs, and were met by paramedics en route who took the 3-year-old to the hospital, Steamboat Today reported.
The shooting took place in Oak Creek.
“This is a tragic loss and our thoughts and prayer are with the family and the community,” Routt County Undersheriff Ray Birch said in a statement.
“It’s very emotional,” Birch told Steamboat Today. “We’re like a family. We’re very close.”
Across the country so far this year, there have been at least 137 other child shootings  — in which a minor unintentionally shoots themselves or others — according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-safety group funded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. That data, compiled by combing news reports, includes shootings that result in injury or death.
[‘Get real’: Detroit’s tough response to an ‘epidemic’ of accidental child shootings]
In 2015, there were at least 278 such shootings, more than half of which involved unsafe storage of guns, according to the advocacy organization.
Anthony Jaliel Lujan Hemmings (Aurora Police Department)Anthony Jaliel Lujan Hemmings (Aurora Police Department)
At least four other children in Colorado this year have been involved with unintentional shootings this year, two of them fatal.
In January, a 9-year-old boy in southern Colorado died after his younger brother shot him in the head. The children were inside a parked vehicle when they found the handgun, according to investigators.
Last month, Anthony Jaliel Lujan Hemmings, 10, died of a gunshot wound in Aurora, Colo. Family members believed that the boy found the gun wrapped in cloth on top of a shelf, and that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Denver Post reported.
Aurora Police later arrested the boy’s 17-year-old brother and charged him as a juvenile with felony negligent child abuse resulting in death.
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