A 14-year-old boy allegedly fatally shot his older sister in Florida after a family argument over Christmas presents, officials said Tuesday.
The teen had been out shopping on Christmas Eve with Abrielle Baldwin, his 23-year-old sister, as well as his mother, 15-year-old brother and sister’s children, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.
The teenage brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.
“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they were having this big thing going on in this store,” Gualtieri said.
The bullet traveled through her left arm and into her chest, popping both of her lungs. She suffered internal bleeding and was unable to breathe
That’s the nice way of saying she drowned in her own blood.
“These young kids — 14, 15 years old — routinely carry firearms and this is what happens when you got young delinquents that carry guns,” Gualtieri said. “They get upset, they don’t know how to handle stuff, and they end up shooting each other.”
Just FYI, this is not limited to children. There’s plenty of adults who have zero idea on how to handle stress without flashing a piece. I’ve seen about six different people use that as a method of indicating I’m getting over in your lane on my way into work pre-pandemic.
I’m pretty gullible and I believe a lot of stuff. So I’m asking this sincerely.
Are you saying that in America people are tapping their widow with a Glock and giving you the stink eye to get into your lane? Like, instead of indicating and then waiting for a safe gap?
America is pretty big, and that isn’t something that happens where I live (Seattle)
But there are parts of this country where a surprisingly large percentage of people are completely fucking insane and peacock with weapons in reckless ways. It also isn’t unusual for children to have guns, even if it isn’t legal.
There’s a high school in rural Colorado that has given up on doing anything about guns in their high school because something like 30% of students are armed on any given day.
I grew up in Tennessee, and students were allowed to store guns in their cars parked in the high school parking lot.
I have met many people who open-carry and then openly emphasize it to others because they want to be intimidating. It’s a part of their identity, and they will let you know in inappropriate ways.
This country is weird. I’m happy to live in a less violent part of it.
I think it is generally unlikely but am also sure that there are places where this is part of the culture.
In Florida you’re allowed to use lethal force if you justifiably believe that your safety is threatened. When lockdown first started, there was a video of a dude having a meltdown at a Costco because he had to wear a mask. The person at the door was a woman of 65-70 and the man child pumped up his chest and yelled “I feel threatened” at her, which I learned in Florida for threatening to murder someone over an inconvenience.
That does seem to be what he is lying about, yes.
More guns in the hands of the other children would have kept this travesty from occurring. #hopesandprayers
'Murica!
If the 11-month old was armed, all this could have been stopped!
15-year-old brother and sister’s children
This sentence is a great argument for the Oxford comma.
The sentence is a great argument for editorial oversight. How’d a copy editor let that go to print???
Go into any of the relationship subreddits today and for the next few days and you will see countless Americans melting down into various degrees of rage and bitterness over Xmas presents.
It’s like this very goddamn year.
Can anyone explain this part of the culture to me?
I’m not saying I hate all Americans or anything ridiculous like that, the cast majority of Americans I’ve met are good hearted people but when it comes to Xmas and in what I’m given understand is the modern vernacular: “y’all cray.”
Don’t any of your families still watch the Charlie Brown Christmas? Because you really should.
Go toxic places to read toxic things. I’ve never heard of this. But also I can’t imagine going to a relationship board and expecting to come away with anything but misanthropy regardless of time of year.
There are 335 million people in the United States.
One asshat shot someone.
I’m not defending guns, shitty culture, or shitty people, but this is clearly a case where this kid has some sort of mental disorder. Literally hundreds of millions of families watched Charlie Brown and went the entire holiday without murdering each other
There were 89 shootings in the united states on Christmas day. Source with incident reports for each one.
89 is 0.00002670367% of 333,287,557.
If it was the only shooting that day, it would have been a peaceful one for a change. Hint: It wasn’t.
No it is not clearly a case where the kid has some sort of mental disorder. You know literally nothing about this person.
I would probably bet that this kid made a stupid split second choice in the heat of the moment about something that (partially likely due to raging teenage hormones) probably seemed very important at the time, and the guilt will haunt him until the end of his life (which, statistically speaking, just got much shorter on average).
This is exactly why guns are so dangerous. It gives people (in this case, a literal child without a fully developed brain) the capability to make a decision to end another life in a split second.
You really think any sane rational FOURTEEN year old would just shoot their sister solely because of a Christmas gift?
I’m not saying 14 year olds have adult mental capacity and decision making … but by that age you KNOW what a gun goes and you KNOW you can’t take it back.
Either there’s more to the story or this kid definitely has some kind of mental disorder or mental distress that they needed to see a therapist about.
Maybe the more to the story is that he thought he could just scare her by pointing the gun at her or her thought it was empty … and it wasn’t/the gun went off. If that’s the case, then the parents really screwed up having a gun in the house, not teaching the kid anything about gun safety, and allowing the kid across to the gun (granted again by 14 you’re pretty smart … the average 14 year old could probably figure out the code or were the keys are kept on a gun safe because I know most people do not follow best practices with any passwords or keys).
And before you make any assumptions like you did with the other person, I’ve voted for Democrats in every election, donated some significant money to their campaigns, and I do not own a gun and do not have any restrictions that prevent me from owning a gun, I’ve just decided that for me … particularly with living alone and a (granted not recent) history of depression that included suicidal thoughts … they’re not a good thing to have around. I avoid alcohol for similar reasons.
Thoughts and prayers might be a meaningless response but a huge block of the population has said “we’re not giving up our guns” … come to think of it … just like a huge block of the population has said “we’re not giving up our alcohol” (as is their right at the polls).
There is a majority that would like to see some common sense gun reform and we should do that. However, I believe the right has a point about mental health and guns. What they don’t have is the willingness to fund mental health systems and instead they blame all the mental health issues on a degraded culture (🙄). We need to bring mental health back into the conversation with information from professionals. They also have a point about teaching kids about gun safety, if we’re going to keep guns, then it’s a public disservice to not teach kids (or at least the kids of gun owners) “this is what a gun is, don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill” and “there’s a difference between pretend and reality, these are never for pretend” as a baseline.
Yes. Countless stories of children murdering their parents over this stuff. It’s very common. Remember that the country is big with lots of people so you’re going to see these things from time to time-it’s statistically likely to happen.
What are you arguing here? That it happens and it’s not mental illness because there are so many people that it’s bound to happen?
No. That with that many people, there are enough whackos that this sort of thing will constantly be in the news even though when compared to the population size the events are still extraordinarily rare.
Is it all about how terrible the gf/bf is for not magically getting the super perfectist thing ever?
If only there was a good sibling with a gun to stop him…
Three years ago I had to stop my 17 year-old adopted sister from hitting our elderly mother over $30 of missing Amazon crap on Christmas day, then I called the sheriff on she and her baby daddy. Five cars came to mediate the situation.
Needless to say, I don’t go to family Christmases anymore.
Families suck.
Sorry to hear that. That’s awful. If you have your own family in the future, that’s your chance to make sure nothing like that happens in it. We learn from the mistakes we experience.
I honestly feel like we had better with each generation from experiences like this.
Lol, what? I’d beat the shit out of her if she tried to lay a hand on me mom.
She’d learn real fucking quick about what it really means to beat on someone weaker than you.
Unclear why second brother being charged with attempted murder but it is presumably because there was a delay between the two shootings.
Strict liability for whoever was the legal owner of the gun(s), I say.
Whoever let these children get their hands on the firearm is absolutely a murderer. Even if it someone who let their gun get stolen from their car. Definitely if it was a family member or friend.
Oh, I remember that event with an actor killing a camera operator with a prop gun (jokingly pointing it at her) or something.
The person responsible for props was a complete dumb baboon and guilty of murder, yes.
However, I was shocked by the fact that so many people think that pointing a real gun, even if it’s a prop, at somebody without checking that it’s not loaded is normal and thus that actor was innocent. They were defending that action as if they themselves would really have taken a gun and squeezed the trigger while pointing at someone without checking.
So maybe it’s about responsibility and education, not ownership of guns.
Because, say, Moldova (off the top of my mind), hardly a rich country or even with a healthy society, has gun laws more liberal than in USA, and doesn’t have school shootings and such events.
Switzerland and Austria have very liberal gun laws, again possibly more so than in USA, and don’t have such a problem.
Can’t speak for Moldova or Austria, but I would not call Switzerland’s gun laws liberal.
They are VERY strict. Gun ownership rates are high, but there are tons of restrictions and licensing requirements on ownership and sale of guns there. The country is proof that having a strong regulatory structure does not necessarily prevent gun ownership and should absolutely be considered a model for where the US regulator environment should be moving (universal registration including 2nd hand sales, full license checks for all purchases including ammo, effective bans on large categories of weapons, mandatory training, and the like).
People who love “gun rights” always cite Switzerland without even doing the most basic Wikipedia-level research on it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those places where you’re required to take some kind of classes to be able to qualify to own a gun? Isn’t it also pretty easy for anyone from the police to be able to take them from you within reason if they find you to be violating some laws?
Yeah. If “taking some kind of classes” is not obligatory in the US, then we have the main reason for all the accidental shootings and kids takings their parents’ guns right here.
Depends on the state of it’s required. Not required in Kansas, but required in Minnesota as an example
and Austria have very liberal gun laws, again possibly more so than in USA,
Austria has relatively relaxed gun laws for Europe. but it’s still fairly strict compared to the USA.
Oh, OK, OK. I’ve literally had something in my memory and did only quick reading on laws in those 2 countries before writing that comment, and evaluated strictness on my own.
Well, those kids had already been born, so IDGAF. Vote Republican!
This is Peak Florida.
America is hell.
The 23 year old sister should’ve had a gun also, to protect herself from 14 year old boys /s
probably need more guns?
Christmas is ruined forever for that family.
Florida: the dong of amerkuh
