A California man and his 10-year-old son were arrested after the boy shot and killed another child using a stolen gun he’d found in his dad’s car, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said.
Deputies said they found the victim, also a 10-year-old boy, unresponsive and bleeding from his head and neck in the parking lot when they responded to a call of a shooting at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday in the 4700 block of Greenholme Drive.
The child was taken to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. He was among more than 1,600 children and teens killed by gun violence in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
“Simultaneously, witnesses at the scene told Deputies that the individual(s) responsible for the shooting ran into a nearby apartment,” deputies said. “Deputies called out all the individuals from that apartment and detained everyone without incident. Detained from the apartment were an adult and two juveniles.”
The adult has been identified as 53-year-old Arkete Davis, according to the sheriff’s office.
Deputies also detained Davis’ 10-year-old son, who had taken a gun from inside his dad’s vehicle when he went to get his father cigarettes, deputies said.
The son bragged that his father had a gun before he “proceeded to shoot the victim once and ran into a nearby apartment,” deputies said. The sheriff’s office did not say how the 10-year-old suspect and the victim might have known each other.
“Detectives located a firearm in a nearby trashcan, where Davis is believed to have tried to dispose of it,” the sheriff’s office said.
Davis was legally prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm, and the recovered firearm had been reported stolen in 2017, deputies said.
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The 10-year-old son was arrested on suspicion of murder and taken to the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility, deputies said.
His father, Davis, faces several felony firearm-related charges, as well as charges of child endangerment and accessory after the fact, deputies said.
Arkete Davis is being held on $500,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court on January 3, according to the sheriff’s office. It was not immediately clear if the father had retained an attorney.
Firearms have become the No. 1 killer of US children, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, which had long been the leading cause of death among America’s youth.
CNN’s Holly Yan contributed to this report.
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