Warning: This article may contain some distressing information.
An 11-year-old child was charged with attempted murder after shooting at two football teammates with his mother’s firearm.
Shocking surveillance footage shared online revealed the moment a young boy from Florida opened fire on his teammates in the parking lot of the Northwest Recreation Complex using his mom's purple 9mm, the Daily Mail reports.
The fellow teammates were heading home after Pop Warner football practice on Monday (October 2) night when the group had an alleged dispute over a bag of chips, according to Metro.
The conflict was captured on a camera from a nearby building, with the harrowing video showing children sporting football jerseys gathering in the lot.
A teenage boy dressed in shorts was seen standing close to another, who was donning a jersey.
The 11-year-old is then spotted retrieving the dangerous weapon from under the front seat of a car before he suddenly turns around and heads towards the group.
He is then seen firing at the boy dressed in shorts, as he was standing just 10 feet away. The shot hit one boy in the torso and grazed the second victim's elbow - leaving both boys injured.
The crowd dispersed after the first shot and a woman - believed to be the shooter's mother - ran around from the driver's side and grabbed the child by his shoulders to lead him back to the SUV.
Authorities were called to the scene around 8:24PM and detained the 11-year-old until investigators arrived. Meanwhile, the two victims were taken to the hospital and are now in stable condition.
As per Daily Mail, the shooter had no criminal history prior to Monday night’s shooting. He was booked at a juvenile facility and charged with second-degree attempted murder.
"That's not good," Apopka Police Chief Mike McKinley told reporters, as cited by NBC News. "We shouldn't have 11-year-olds that have access to guns and think they can resolve a dispute with a firearm."
Even though the firearm was left in a box in the shooter's mom's car, it was not locked. McKinley revealed in a press conference that due to this, law enforcement intends to pursue charges against the mother.
"It is a crime to allow your children to have access to a firearm in an unsecured box," the police said, per Metro. "For all the parents out there - if you have a firearm in your car or a firearm in your house, you have a responsibility to make sure that firearm is secure and not accessible to our youth. It only takes one bad decision, in a split second, to ruin lives."
The police chief described the shooting as an "isolated incident" and declared that there was no threat to the public as the Northwest Recreation Center is a "very safe place".
"Our hope is that the 11-year-old gets the assistance he needs to make sure this isn’t a resolution for the rest of his life," McKinley continued. "He’s 11, he’s got a long life ahead of him. There’s no doubt that he can turn things around.
"Hopefully our court system, with diversion programs and counseling and other things, can help him past this and move to a point where reaching for a firearm is not his resolution for the future," he added.
Furthermore, Pop Warner officials released a statement, writing that they are trying to "better understand the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and work to ensure appropriate measures are in place to support the program and its members".
"We were saddened by the frightening incident," The Mid-Florida League of the youth football organization added. "The scourge of gun violence is even more disturbing when young children are involved."
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