Florida Injury Lawyer Blawg
One teen charged, another killed after the two were playing with a loaded gun at an apartment in Broward County, officials say.
The incident happened around 2:30 p.m. Monday. The teen who was hit was identified by police in reporting by The Miami Herald as 16-year-old Christopher Granados. He was taken to the hospital by emergency responders where he was pronounced dead.
The other boy involved in the incident, who was not named, was charged Tuesday with manslaughter.
Additional information including who owned the guns and how the minors were able to access them was not immediately available Thursday.
The incident is under investigation by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
Other Gun-Related Incidents
Recently, an 11-year-old in Volusia County, Florida was charged after he made a kill list and threatened to shoot up his middle school. The middle schooler was perp walked, a promise that the local sheriff made last week in a press conference to teach children and their parents a lesson after he and his department became exasperated with a spate of false threats. The hoax threats allegedly cost the department over $20,000 to investigate.
The 11-year-old in that incident was charged with making written threats to commit a mass shooting and allegedly had access to weapons he was showing off to other students at school including airsoft rifles, pistols, fake ammunition, swords and knives.
Last year, coordinated “swatting” efforts were being investigated by the FBI, causing hundreds of schools in at least 24 states to go into lockdown and law enforcement to respond to active shooting situations that, in the end, weren’t real. The callers in those incidents use free, internet-calling services in which anyone with an email address can appear as though they are calling from a U.S. phone number. These platforms can make it difficult for law enforcement to trace, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
Nationwide Numbers
About 1,262 children died or were injured as a result of accidental shootings in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control that tracked these incidents from 2003 until 2021. Unintentional injury is among the leading causes of death in children under 17 years old and gun-related incidents are a leading injury type. The majority of these incidents take place at home.
About 67% of the children in these incidents were injured when playing with the weapons of showing them off to others, the data showed. More than half of these weapons were stored loaded and were left unlocked in places such as nightstands or other sleeping areas.
These incidents are entirely preventable, the CDC says. Locking away firearms, unloading them before they are put away, educating children on the dangers associated with toying with these weapons and keeping the ammunition separate from the weapons are all methods in which parents can use to keep their children and other safe.
Leesfield & Partners
In its 48 years in Florida, Leesfield & Partners has represented a considerable amount of families through tragic drop-fire gun cases that have caused numerous injuries and, in some cases, the agonizing loss of a loved one.
As with litigation surrounding medical malpractice cases, proving defective product cases can be a long, arduous process. In some instances, clients can go through several years of active litigation before a settlement or trial. Leesfield & Partners has decades of experience proving product liability cases as can be seen in successful and record verdicts surrounding a 27-year-old’s permanent injury due to a malfunctioning motorcycle kickstand and results from defective juvenile products. The latter eventually led to industry-wide change thanks to the efforts of Leesfield & Partners attorneys who raised alarm bells for various safety issues associated with the product.
The firm has represented clients in cases of defective firearms including drop-fire cases and faulty safety mechanisms.
Leesfield & Partners attorneys previously represented a client whose handgun malfunctioned. A seven-figure settlement with the gun manufacturer was achieved for the client via mediation.
In a tragic case involving the death of a minor as a result of a defective firearm, Leesfield & Partners attorneys secured a $3,000,000 recovery for the child’s family.
In another product liability injury case against a gun manufacturer, the firm secured $2.1 million for the client.
Leesfield & Partners attorneys also obtained a $1.5 million recovery for a client injured by a faulty firearm.
What to Know
If you were unfortunately involved in a case of a defective firearm, do not dispose or alter the weapon in any way. For a personal injury claim, it is crucial to preserve the evidence which, in this case, would be the weapon that caused the incident.
The weapon will be handled and investigated by a Leesfield & partners gun expert to ascertain what went wrong with the weapon to cause the incident. This expert will later test the weapon in a controlled environment that will mimic the conditions of the day in which the incident occurred to replicate the issue for demonstration purposes.
