Colorado Springs stepfather arrested after child accidentally shoots self

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- A man has been arrested for child abuse after a four-year-old boy accidentally shot himself and grazed his head.

According to Colorado Springs police, it happened last Thursday in an apartment near 3900 Harmony Drive. Witnesses reported seeing a young child who was crying in the window and had blood on his face.

Police say a four-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl were left in the apartment alone while their stepfather, 22-year-old Christopher Little, drove to the hospital. Little was picking up the children's mother at the hospital, who was there for "an unrelated procedure," police said.

CSPD says the four-year-old accidentally shot himself somehow and was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Police found multiple loose firearms throughout the apartment, and they also found a bullet hole in the wall near the window where witnesses saw the boy.

Little spoke with police and "understood the seriousness of what he had done and stated how horrible he felt," according to the arrest affidavit.

The ER doctor treating the child told detectives that if the child's wound would have been one millimeter lower, the boy would have died.

“At the time it did appear that it was a self-inflicted superficial wound," said CSPD spokeswoman Natashia Kerr. "So nothing to serious which we were very very thankful of."

Kerr says people should keep their guns locked and away from children so that everybody stays safe.

Officers arrested Little for felony and misdemeanor charges of child abuse. He's been booked into the El Paso County jail.