Daniel Metz, 3, died in the hospital on Tuesday, July 19, after he accidentally shot himself in his Maryland Heights, Missouri home, where he found his policeman father Ryan‘s gun in a bedroom. Ryan’s wife Amanda was home when she heard the gun shot and ran to the back room, finding Daniel. She then dialed 911 and Ryan responded to the emergency call. Is this your worst nightmare?

Ryan was one of the first officers to the scene and watched on as colleagues tried desperately to resuscitate his son. Daniel died in DePaul hospital at 6:05 pm, half an hour after the shooting.

Police chief Thomas O’Connor says the gun was not Ryan’s personal firearm, and had not been issued by the department. “It’s a terrible thing. It’s pretty much a shock,” chief O’Connor tells Fox 12. “I’ve been a police officer 29 years and I never brought a loaded gun into my home while my kids were there for this very reason. The gun should have been unavailable, locked up or something else, for a toddler to find.”

The chief adds that Ryan and Amanda, who have two other children, are absolutely devastated and are being given some space before the investigation begins. No one knows how or where Daniel found the gun in the bedroom. Our hearts go out to everyone involved.

–Leigh Blickley

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The two boys were playing happily in their Hillcrest Heights, Maryland apartment complex playground when neighbors heard a loud boom. The five-year-old accidentally shot and badly injured his four-year-old friend with what is reported to be a 0.22-calibre pistol.

Neighbor Ebony Webb took the injured boy, who was shot in the chest, inside as the five-year-old ran off with his weapon and hid in the family’s apartment. He was allegedly being watched over by his 18-year-old sister while his mother was at work.

“He shot him real close so I took him upstairs… took metal pieces out of the wound,” Ebony explains to ABC7. “He didn’t cry or nothing. He’s a soldier.”

Ebony says the boy was in shock, so she called police and attempted to clean up his wound while she waited for an ambulance to arrive. He was rushed to the local children’s hospital where he is said to be doing fine. His injuries are not life-threatening.

The five-year-old boy lives at home with his mom and three siblings and his uncle, Dee Johnson, says there are definitely no guns in the house. Police officers are continuing their investigation in order to figure out how the young boy got his hands on a gun.

–Leigh Blickley

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The 14-month-old boy watched as his grandmother gunned down his mother in a Target parking lot. How absolutely terrifying is this?

The woman, Joanna Hayes of Snellville, Georgia, is currently on trial for the disturbing incident, which occurred on April 26, 2009. Joanna, disguised as a man, shot and killed her daughter-in-law, Heather Strube, 25, in broad daylight in a crowded Target parking lot while her 18-month-old grandson, Carson, watched just a few feet away from his car seat.

Prosecutors say that just minutes before Joanna pulled the trigger, her son and Heather’s ex-husband Steven Strube dropped off Carson for a planned visitation hand-off. Steven is not connected at all to the murder, which authorities claim was triggered by “bad blood” between the two women over divorce proceedings associated with the Strubes.

According to the Daily Mail, the state claims that Joanna did not want Heather to get custody of Carson, saying she was “not being a good mother.”

After witnesses described a truck similar to Joanna’s white Ford F-150 pick-up outside of Target during the time of the incident, authorities looked into her as a suspect and found fiber “consistent from a wig” inside her vehicle.

She faces charges of felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, although her defense lawyers say the case is based on “circumstantial evidence” and that the Snellville police jumped the gun when they targeted in on her early in the investigation.

–Leigh Blickley

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The unsupervised pair were playing with the bolt-action rifle at their home in Victoria County, Texas when it went off, hitting the younger sibling in the stomach.

Amazingly the children’s parents were AT HOME when the accident happened on May 4. Are they to blame?After hearing the gunshot, the parents called 911 and then drove the wounded four-year-old to meet paramedics — but he tragically died at Victoria’s Citizens Medical Center just 30 minutes after the alarm was raised.

The Sheriff’s Office has closed ranks, refusing to release the name of the family and even the gender of the older sibling — but they’ve vowed to investigate how the children were allowed access to weapons and why they were left unsupervised.

This tragic accident is sure to fuel the ongoing debate about gun laws in the US.

Share your thoughts with us HollyMoms. Should the parents be prosecuted?

– Ian Garland

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Terrified Amber Carter had already watched Dennis Carter Sr. shoot her husband and mother-in-law, and feared she, her son Mason and her unborn child were next.

Dennis Carter Sr. caught up with the pair and opened fire as mom-to-be Amber and 2-year-old Mason clambered out of the window of their Louisiana home, hitting them with a total of twelve bullets before they tumbled to the ground below. Is this terrifying tale every mom’s worst nightmare?

“I’m thinking, ‘This is it. He’s going to kill us,” Amber says, describing her desperate attempt to escape the rampage back in 2009.

Amber and Mason made it to the ground alive, only to find Dennis Sr. had raced down the stairs to confront them again. He then shot Amber in the back on the sidewalk and Mason died in her arms.

Dennis Sr. later turned his gun on himself, adding himself to a list of victims that included his wife Donna, son (Amber’s husband) Dennis Jr. and his grandson Mason.

Amazingly when paramedics arrived at the grisly scene they found Amber was still alive and after an emergency Caesarian section she gave birth to her three-months premature baby daughter Aubrey Marie.

Two years, a 78-day stay in the hospital and 10 operations later, Amber is now partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

And she’s furious that more wasn’t done to stop Dennis before it was too late — revealing he had been arrested three times for domestic abuse and violating a protection order.

Speaking on The Today Show, Amber says, “The judicial system does not protect wives in domestic violence situations.”

But she appreciates that both she and Aubrey, now 20-months-old,  survived the wrath of her evil father-in-law, adding, “It’s brought us so much grief, but we have Aubrey and she’s doing well. That makes us happy.”

Do you think wives and moms get enough protection? Share your views HollyMoms!

– Ian Garland

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The loaded gun fell from the kindergarten student’s pants in the cafeteria during lunch period at Betsy Ross Elementary School on Tuesday, causing it to go off. Can you believe this?

The boy who brought the gun was wounded in the foot, another six-year-old boy was struck in the leg and a five-year-old girl was hit in the foot. All three were hit by a single bullet or bullet fragments.

Emergency services were called and the three injured children were taken to Texas Children’s Hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries.

The gunshots terrified all the kids eating in the cafeteria, including five-year-old eyewitness Jarneshia Broussard. She told reporters, “I knew it was a gun because a gun goes ‘pow’. I got really scared.”

But the parents of one of the injured children, Khoran Brown, insists their son is already eager to get back to class “It is a sad situation that took place today, but we are thankful our son is in good spirits. He is already asking to get back to school.”

Investigating officers are now trying to piece together events and figure out how a child so young was able to bring a loaded weapon to school.

– Ian Garland

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The son shot his teacher mom in the back of the head and then tried to frame a made-up suspect.

Just devastating. A 14-year-old boy from Orangefield, Texas snuck up behind his 46-year-old mother, Staci Lisenby on Feb, 20 and shot her at point-blank range in the head for “being too strict.” The popular math teacher at Orangefield Junior High, who won teacher of the year in 2010, was alive when police reached her, but died later in the hospital.

Her youngest son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was the only other person in the house when the incident occurred. The 14-year-old claims that he saw an intruder running out of the house after her heard the gun shot. He says he chased the suspect through the muddy and wet woods, but returned to the house to call the police after he lost him.

After police found no trace of a man running/walking to or from the house, they turned the investigation to the boy. Friends of the teen later told investigators that he had been talking about killing his parents, with one friend saying, the boy was “tired of how strict his parents were and that he intended on killing them both and then running away.”

The boy’s father was at church with his wife was shot and killed.

A number of guns were kept hidden and safe in the house, but Staci died from a .22 caliber bullet wound — a bullet from a .22 caliber pistol her son had possession of after he found in the attic.

The boy is now at a juvenile detention center after he gave himself up to police. Interestingly enough, attorney Wendell Odom Jr, who defended Andrea Yates, the Houston woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001, has been appointed as his lawyer.

–Leigh Blickley

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What’s going on with Hollywood’s former child stars? Is it that toxic to be a teen on TV? The actor who played a nerd now stands accused of a terrifingly violent incident on Feb. 11 in Phoenix.

Here’s what went down, according to Frankie Muniz‘ girlfriend Elycia Turnbow.  She told Phoenix police that the former Malcolm in the Middle star “grabbed a gun and held it to his head, possibly with the intent of committing suicide,” TMZ.com reports.

Elycia said she and Frankie, 25, had been battling over “prior relationships” on Feb. 11 when he picked up the gun. And she claims he punched her later that night.

But Frankie tells a whole different story –he say he had to defend himself after Elycia woke him up by yelling at him and assaulting him. In the version he gave to the police, “Elycia fell to the ground and started to kick the bedroom door.” He told officers he would never, ever hit Elycia — “I love her too much. She is the woman I want to marry.”

Police say they found the gun– with bullets in the magazine. But it turns out Frankie was the one who called the police for help — because he was “scared that this was getting out of control,” GossipCop.com reports.

The cops say neither Frankie or Elycia had signs of injuries. Still, officers took the gun out of the house. And they left the couple with a warning — if officers are called back to their house, they both could get locked up!

But this twisted tale gets even stranger — by Valentine’s Day, Frankie felt things with Elycia, who works as a publicist, were back on track. So good, in fact, that he tweeted, “The table all set for Valentine’s Day dinner.”

Now a rep for Frankie says “a gun played no part in the argument,” “he was not suicidal” and Elycia was not assaulted. The couple, the rep claims, is “moving forward with their lives and with their relationship.”

Since Malcolm in the Middle ended its six-year run in 2006 , Frankie has had only a handful of major movie and TV roles. Maybe he saw that his path could lead to a dead end. After starting his acting career at age 8, he turned his sights to auto racing. He’s done pretty well — driving for sponsored teams and slowly rising up in the ladder of professional ranks.