Chicago Boy Shot in 2016 Shoots Himself in Hand

A 5-year-old boy who was struck in the face last year by a stray bullet fired during a drive-by shooting accidentally shot himself in the hand this week with a gun his father had obtained illegally, Chicago police say. Kavan Collins found the loaded, uncased gun under a mattress in an upstairs bedroom and shot himself in the finger Tuesday evening. The boy's father, Kevin Collins, was arrested late Wednesday on several felony gun charges and six misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, the AP reports. Police said the 25-year-old convicted felon's gun had a defaced serial number—which is commonly done to illegal guns to make them more difficult to trace.

Kavan was listed in good condition at Comer Children's Hospital—the same hospital the boy was taken to in June 2016 when he was shot in the face as he and his mother walked down the street on the city's South Side. The boy's mother, D'Antignay Brashear, told the AP last year that she was holding the boy's hand when she heard the sound of gunfire and looked down to see a bullet fired from a passing vehicle had fractured her son's jaw and shattered some teeth before it went out his other cheek. "I don't know how to explain it to him," she said. "How do you tell a kid, 'Oh, you got shot.'" Police said Kavan was not the intended target of the shooting.

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