Inset: Isaiah Chavez (Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Authorities at the home where Chavez’s cousin allegedly shot herself with his gun (KRQE)
A 26-year-old man in New Mexico is accused of letting an 8-year-old girl shoot herself, allegedly leaving his unsecured handgun on a kitchen counter, where the child found the firearm and put a bullet through both her legs.
Police took Isaiah Richard Chavez into custody and charged him with one count each of child abuse and negligently making a firearm accessible to a minor without great bodily harm, court records show.
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Officers with the Albuquerque Police Department responded at about 6 a.m. on April 27 to a home in the 6500 block of Basket Weaver Ave. NW regarding a report of a child suffering a gunshot wound, according to a report from Albuquerque Raw, citing the criminal complaint.
A relative in the home who was a registered nurse transported the child to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where doctors determined her injuries to be non-life-threatening.
Chavez, the victim’s cousin, did not live at the home, but had stayed there overnight and slept on the couch, local NBC affiliate KOB reported. He told investigators that he emptied his pockets before going to sleep and placed his belongings, including the handgun, on the kitchen counter.
“I usually never stay here,” Chavez told police in body camera footage posted by local Fox affiliate KRQE. “I usually leave it in my truck if I do stay here.”
In an interview with detectives, Chavez said he was asleep when his cousin found the firearm.
“I just heard a loud pop and I was like — excuse my language — but I was like, ‘what the f— was that?'” he said. “And so, right away I ran to my mom’s room and I was like, ‘Mom, I think the baby just f—ing shot herself.'”
After consulting with the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, police charged Chavez under Bennie’s Law, which makes it a crime for adults to fail to secure firearms from minors. The law is named for Bennie Hargrove, an Albuquerque student who was shot and killed in 2021 by a classmate who brought a loaded firearm to school.
Chavez’s family said it believes the shooting was an accident and that he should not have been charged.
“It was a freak accident. I mean, it was just. It was like. It was just all, like a big storm of everything that happened to it. It wasn’t like, you know, it wasn’t his fault,” a family member told local ABC affiliate KOAT.
Chavez was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center and pleaded not guilty, KRQE reported. His trial is reportedly scheduled to take place in July 2027.
The post ‘I think the baby just f—ing shot herself’: Man charged after 8-year-old suffers self-inflicted gunshot wound first appeared on Law & Crime.
