Boy, 6, shoots his brother, 4

New York, June 26: In yet another shooting incident in the US involving toddlers, a six-year-old boy playing with his mother’s gun accidentally shot and killed his fouryear-old brother.

The older boy was playing with his mother’s loaded gun at the family’s third-floor apartment in New Jersey when he accidentally shot his brother in the head, Connie Jackson, a city spokeswoman, said.

The boy was taken to University Hospital in Newark where he was pronounced dead yesterday, a hospital spokesperson was quoted as saying by CBS News.

The boys’ mother, 22year-old Itiyanah Spruill, was arrested later and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and a weapons violation. She was being held on $310,000 bail.

“This is a terribly unfortunate incident,” Mayor Lester E Taylor III said in a statement. “This is crazy because they should have a safe place,” Vania Limage, a neighbour, was quoted as saying.

City police and investigators with Essex County’s Major Crimes Task Force were investigating the shooting.

The incident was the latest in a slew of shootings in the US involving toddlers.

A 5-year-old girl in Detroit last month died after she shot herself with a gun she found under her grandmother's pillow. —

The older boy was playing with his mother’s loaded gun when he accidentally shot his brother in the head

The mother was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and a weapons violation