By Tim Stelloh -
NBC News
A 3-year-old girl died after being hospitalized for accidentally shooting herself during Christmas in North Carolina, authorities said Wednesday.
The girl, Aylee Gordon, was pronounced dead Tuesday night
at Mission Hospital in the city of Asheville, the Henderson County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Aylee was the daughter of Tim Gordon, a retired captain of the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, an office spokesman said in an email.
The deadly incident occurred in the rural community of Edneyville and was reported Saturday afternoon, around 2:30 pm, authorities said.
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According to the audio of the 911 call, Gordon contacted the emergency service and assured that for the holidays his family received a visitor who accidentally left a weapon in his car.
The recording was obtained by affiliate WYFF in Greenville, South Carolina, from NBC News, Telemundo's sister network.
"She took it and (the gun) went off
," her father explained, according to the communication.
Gordon, who retired in 2016, took Aylee to the fire station because she was having difficulties with the signal on her cell phone, WYFF reported.
The girl was taken to Mission Hospital, about 20 miles north.
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For now there are no more details about the incident.
Authorities assured that possible criminal charges will be decided by the local prosecutor's office or by the North Carolina Department of Investigation.
Neither agency responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
[Rejection reactions against the photo of a congressman posing with weapons after the Michigan shooting]
This year,
1,046 children under the age of 11 were killed or injured by firearms
, a figure higher than that reported in 2020, which was 999. In the previous six years, between 600 and 700 cases have been registered, according to the Violence File by Arms.
A report published this year by the Children's Defense Fund, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, found that, in 2019, gun violence was the leading cause of death for children and adolescents under 19 years of age. .
