Twelve-year-old Paris Harvey allegedly shot and killed her cousin, 14-year-old Kuaron Harvey, then shot and killed herself in St. Louis during an Instagram Live video around 2 a.m. Friday.
NBC News reports that police categorized the incident as “murder-suicide,” but family members claim it was nothing of the sort.
Paris’s mother told KSDK that she allowed her daughter to go to a family party and that Paris and Kuaron were making a video when the shooting occurred.
She said, “Everybody was getting together to celebrate, and so the younger kids, they got a bed and breakfast. They were making a video, and (Paris) was playing with the gun, but it went off and hit him.”
Paris’s mother added, “(Paris) dropped the gun, and it fell, and it went off to my knowledge. And then when she picked it up, she picked it up by the barrel and it went off. That’s all I know … It was not a suicide. It was just a freak accident.”
FOX 5/Associated Press notes that Paris’s grandmother said, “It wasn’t a situation where they were arguing or anything like that. They were playing with the gun, when they shouldn’t have been. Of course, they shouldn’t have been doing it. I think it just went off. It went off by mistake.”
Police are trying to ascertain the owner of the gun.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.