US shooting: 8-year-old boy shot in face in Texas City

An 8-year-old boy has been shot in the face by a younger child at a Texas City apartment complex, according to US police officials.

According to the reports, the victim who was shot Thursday by his cousin had to be airlifted to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas City police said.

Texas City Police Capt. Joe Stanton said the boy was shot in the left cheek in Texas City, a city of 45,000 roughly 40 miles outside of Houston.

The children were left alone at home on Thursday when they found a loaded .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun in the house.

“The 7-year-old was waving it and it went off and struck the 8-year-old in the left cheek,” Stanton said. “We don’t think it was an intentional act on the part of the 7-year-old.”

“Parents shouldn’t leave their guns around because a lot of kids think that they’re play guns being that they have play guns to play with,” neighbor Mary Tripnett said.

The state’s child protective services agency is investigating the incident.

On Monday, a 3-year-old girl was seriously injured when a 5-year-old shot her in Colorado.

The incident also came a week after a 5-year-old child in the state of Idaho was fatally shot by another 5-year-old.

Injuries from firearms send an estimated 7,000 kids to the ER every year, and an additional 3,000 children die from gunshot wounds before they can get to a hospital, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

About 85 Americans are shot dead daily, 53 of them suicides. According to data from the FBI, there were 682 homicides in Michigan in 2012, nearly 79 percent of which involved firearms.