Chinese toddler blasts mum while playing with illegal pellet pistol
PUBLISHED : Friday, 27 November, 2015, 5:50pm
UPDATED : Friday, 27 November, 2015, 5:52pm
Mandy Zuo
[email protected]
An X-ray image of pellets embedded in the woman’s scalp. Photo: News.163.com
A toddler in southwest China accidentally fired dozens of steel pellets into the back of her mother’s head while playing with a pistol used for shooting birds.
Doctors removed 35 pellets from the back of the mother’s head on Thursday, the Chengdu Business News reported.
The woman, surnamed Liu, said the gun, a gift from a friend of her husband, had been kept behind a door at home and neither she nor her husband noticed their two-year-old girl playing with it before the accident.
Li said there was a loud bang and then felt like someone pushed her. Her husband took the 20cm pistol off the child but it was too late - Liu’s scalp was full of holes.
Doctors spent three hours tracing and removing the pellets. They had to wait to remove the last one after Liu had passed the danger period for infection.
Liu refused to answere doctors’ questions about how the accident happened.
Pellet guns, like other firearms, are illegal in the mainland, although they are manufactured for export and do find their way into local hands via the black market, according to recent media reports.
An old man in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, handed in such a gun together with 580 pellets to authorities in July.
In August, police in Shanxi province detained two young men who used homemade pellet guns to shoot birds.
