Mom Admits She Accidentally Shot 4-Year-Old Child After Initially Blaming Robber: Police

KEY POINTS

The 4-year-old girl is in critical condition after being shot in the arm and leg but is expected to recover
Her mother initially claimed the girl was shot during an attempted robbery
The woman later admitted she shot her child twice by accident while she was cleaning her firearm

A Michigan mother admitted she accidentally shot her 4-year-old daughter after initially claiming that her child had been shot during an attempted robbery, police said.

The child, whose name was not released, was shot in the arm and leg on Brush near East Grand Boulevard in Detroit Friday afternoon, police told Fox 2. The girl is in critical condition but is expected to recover.

Detroit police said that the girl's 26-year-old mother was taken into custody Friday evening after making up a story to shift blame, Detroit News reported.

Hours after the shooting, the mother confessed that she accidentally shot her child while she was cleaning her firearm and that it was not a robbery as she had originally claimed.

The mother, whose identity was also not disclosed, initially told police that she and her daughter were entering their apartment when a man tried to steal her purse, Police Chief James White said.

The woman claimed the man fired multiple shots as she was fighting him off and then fled the scene in a pickup truck, WXYZ reported.

After the police's initial interview with the mother, White said that they were still trying to make the pieces of the investigation fit and are getting a search warrant for the apartment.

However, half an hour after the press conference with the police chief, the mother admitted that there was no attempted purse-snatching and no robber and that she had shot her child twice by accident while cleaning her gun, authorities said.

“Regardless of how this story comes together, the bottom line is we’ve got a 4-year-old baby that’s shot at this house," the chief said.

It is not clear what charges the mother is facing in the shooting.

The weapon had not yet been recovered as of Friday night.

Paul Markel, a former police officer and firearms instructor in Mississippi, said accidental shootings usually occur because owners were not educated properly on how to clean, load or handle their weapons, the Associated Press reported.

"Ninety-nine out of 100 times, there is not something wrong with the gun," Markel said, "It's the person holding it."