Four-Year-Old Florida Girl Looking For Candy Finds Gun, Accidentally Kills Herself
A four-year-old girl from Tampa, Florida accidentally kills herself after finding a gun in her grandmother’s purse. Yanelly Zoller, known to her family as Nelly, died after suffering a gunshot wound to her chest last September 14. The medical examiner’s office found out that girl died due to perforation of her aorta, esophagus, and lungs.
According to Jonathan Capriel of The Tampa Bay Times, Nelly was just looking for candy in her grandmother’s purse but she found a gun instead. The four-year-old girl accidentally pulled the trigger and the bullet hit her chest. The authorities have not released what type of gun killed the girl.
“She just wanted some damn candy,” Shane Zoller, the father of the girl, told the Times on Wednesday.
The unfortunate accident happened last week at the home Nelly’s grandparents, Michael and Christie Zoller, in North Tampa, Florida. Shane told the Times that he was about to pick up her little girl to bring her to the splash pads when he saw all the police cars in her parents’ home.
Nelly, along with her younger brother, was being shared in custody by her father and mother with another child on the way. Shane was still in high school when they had their little girl, who loved playing with her dog, jumping on the couch, and watching cartoons.
Christie Zoller, the grandmother and owner of the gun, called Nelly “pop tart” and she uploaded a lot of pictures of the girl on her Facebook page. Christie was looking for answers in her recent post (h/t The Washington Post) from God why her grandchild was taken from them just like that.
“God please answer me why did you take her. Good night sweet Angel nana loves you more than words could ever say.”
The funeral of the little girl took place on Thursday at the Sunset Memory Gardens in Thonotosassa, Florida. The Zoller family received some help for the funeral through their fundraisers. $2,480 was raised in the family’s Go Fund Me page while an additional $502 came from her You Caring page.
According to John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post, an estimated 8,400 children were shot by a gun in 2015 with 1,458 dying from their wounds. That is an average of 23 children per day and one bullet hitting a child every 63 minutes. The report noted that the 1,458 children killed in 2015 due to guns are more than the casualties of the United States military force in Afghanistan since 2005.
The Tampa, Florida police are still investigating the incident even though they have concluded that the girl accidentally shot herself. The authorities do not doubt the family’s story and no charges are going to be filed against the girl’s grandmother.
[Featured Image by @MomsDemand/Twitter]
