5-Year-Old Girl Dies After Playmate Accidentally Shot Her in the Head

A five-year-old girl has died after one of her friends accidentally shot her in the head, while they were playing.

The victim, Jada Willingham, was playing with her friend last Friday, when her babysitter suddenly heard a gunshot, followed by crying.

The babysitter entered the room and found the little girl's face bleeding, according to a Yahoo News report.

Jada was taken to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston Hospital, but she later died.

The girl's friend said she had only pulled the trigger back a "little bit." She was one of the four children at home at the time of shooting.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the two girls had known each other their entire lives.

Officers arrived at the girl's home in Georgia at around 3:20 p.m. They then found the five-year-old victim lying on the bedroom floor.

Police also found the babysitter, who was the grandmother of one of the children, kneeling beside the girl with a cloth, trying to stop the bleeding.

The gun, 9mm Smith & Wesson, was reportedly found by the girls without a holster, full magazine, with a round chambered, according to the arrest warrant.

The father of the other children, 36-year-old Chad Brooks Sr., was arrested the following day. Authorities believed he was not the shooter. However, the gun is believed to belong to him.

Brooks, who was reportedly in the military, left the handgun unattended. He will be charged with second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children.

Police said they are not considering any other charges aside from lawsuits filed against Brooks.

The Incident

The children took the gun from a bedroom, where Jada told the other child to pull the trigger, according to police reports as told by the babysitter.

The babysitter said she heard the gunshot from the kitchen and came to the bedroom to see what had happened. There she found Jada bleeding.

The incident report said that the playmate showed police where she and Jada had found the weapon.

"She grabbed my hand and led me down the hall into her parents' room and advised she located it on the floor on top of a small ammo box beside the bed," a police said as quoted in an AJC story.

The young girl told investigators that she did not know that there were bullets in it.

Meanwhile, Jada's mother, Keisha Walker, said she wants to talk about her daughter's memory in the future. She said she was too emotional to have that kind of conversation at this time.

Walker created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Jada's funeral. The fundraising page said that because of the sad accident, a mother is left without her beautiful five-year-old daughter this holiday season.

The GoFundMe page noted that the five-year-old girl would never get to experience any holidays, birthdays, or other meaningful life experiences.

Walker also demanded that other adults be held responsible for her daughter's death, saying that the babysitter showed so much negligence when her daughter got shot.