Bristol Police Investigating After 7-Year-Old Discovers Loaded Handgun

By Justin Muszynski, The Bristol Press

June 23, 2021

Police are investigating after a 7-year-old girl found a loaded handgun in a residential yard last week.

Police said the gun, which was loaded with a combination of hollow point and ball ammo bullets, was found outside a home on Wolcott Street last Thursday.

The young girl who discovered the firearm was playing in the front yard of her grandparents’ home at the time, according to the police report. She did not touch the weapon and instead notified her grandparents, telling them she had found a “bad thing” in the grass, the report said.

The grandparents told an officer they had no idea how the gun could have gotten there. They also said they did not have any kind of surveillance cameras at their home that could have helped determine how the gun ended up in the yard, the report said.

Police seized the 9mm handgun and brought it to the police department.

The grandparents expressed concern that the young girl could have harmed herself, according to the report. They requested that, if police can trace the gun back to someone, charges be filed.

The home where the gun was found is not far from South Side School, where a firearm was found in 2017 by a group of students near the building’s entrance. Though police believe that gun was linked to a Hartford man who was involved in a rollover crash not far from the school.

Justin Muszynski can be reached at 860-973-1809 or jmuszynski@bristolpress.com.