An 8-year-old boy died Tuesday in Lehi, Utah. USAafter accidentally shooting himself in the head with a gun his mother kept under the car seat.

The city police department said the child died Tuesday morning at a hospital, a day after the incident occurred It happened in the parking lot of a gas station..

According to a statement from Lehi police, officers were called to the scene at 7:39 p.m. Monday responded to an ambulance call for a minor who had received a gunshot wound to the head.

Apparently, the boy was alone in the carwhile his mother was at the gas station. According to an eyewitness to the incident, the TV channel KSL TVThe woman started screaming, “He shot himself, he shot himself, he shot himself. (…) He found the gun under my seat and pulled the trigger. “It was a complete accident.”

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The shooting was ‘involuntary and self-inflicted’– police said. The boy was taken by helicopter to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, where he died several hours later.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 11,515 people have died from guns in the United States this year. 166 of them are children under 11 years old.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently said that gun death rates among young Americans almost six times higher than in Canadawhich is almost 23 times higher than in Australia and almost 73 times higher than in the United Kingdom.

In fact, in 2020, gunshot wounds exceeded road traffic accidents as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. (EFE)