Written by By Staff Writer
CNN
(CNN) – The 5-year-old boy fatally shot in Minnesota on Sunday was an innocent bystander who was playing with a toy gun when the gunman reached for it to record a video, police said.
The shooter, who is a juvenile, allegedly left the gun with a friend while he went to get drinks with two females, according to Paul Gustafson, a spokesperson for the Brainerd Police Department.
Once at the scene, the shooter retrieved the gun and aimed it at the man with the girl, Gustafson said. The boy then fatally shot himself, according to Brainerd police.
“When they returned, they found the child deceased on the porch,” the police department said in a statement. “When we go forward, I don’t think we’ll ever know the motive, but we do know that he leaves that juvenile behind to clean up the crime scene to return to the residence of the adults and to flee the scene,” Gustafson said.
He added that detectives were trying to determine if the gun used in the incident, a .22-caliber revolver, could have belonged to the man who initially fired it.
Baxter is in southern Minnesota, about 45 miles north of Brainerd.
Police spoke with the relatives of the family, who claimed that the “gun and ammunition in question was put in the 5-year-old’s hands for the youngster to use for his own entertainment,” the police department said.
Authorities believe the shooting is a tragic accident, according to the department.