YOUNGSTOWN — The boy injured by a gunshot in the Victory Estates apartments got hold of his parent’s pistol and accidentally shot himself but is in stable condition at Akron Children’s Hospital, Capt. Jason Simon said Tuesday.

The boy is 3, and the police department is investigating to determine whether anyone will be charged, he said.

The incident happened about 1:50 p.m. Monday in his home on McBride Street on the East Side.

When police arrived, a woman was holding the boy, who was transported to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. Simon would not say where on his body the boy was shot.

Police Chief Carl Davis and Mayor Jamael Tito Brown called a news conference Tuesday to remind people that the police department continues to partner with Project Child Safe to provide free gun locks to help families keep firearms away from children.

The department is encouraging the public to access gun safety information on the following two websites: www.youngstownohio.gov/police and www.projectchildsafe.org

SECOND SHOOTING

Meanwhile, a second shooting Monday, apparently less serious, involved a man, 30, shot in the leg. That happened on Lee Avenue on the South Side at 7:43 p.m.

The man said he was in the driveway of a home with the mother of his children when an unknown car with unknown occupants turned onto the street from South Avenue and started shooting. The rear windshield of the woman’s car was shot out along with the tires on the passenger side of the car.

The house also was hit by gunfire, a police report states. The victim was taken to St. Elizabeth. No one else was injured. Police recovered 13 bullet shell casings from the area.

THREE HOMICIDES

Capt. Rod Foley, chief of the detective division, said Tuesday that the three homicides in the city — late Thursday, Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon — do not appear to be related.

City officials appeared to be concerned, during an earlier news conference Saturday at the police station, about retaliation shootings. Davis and Brown urged the public to remain calm, and Brown asked for everyone to refrain from “street justice.”

Foley said police do not believe Thursday night’s shooting death on South Avenue and Friday afternoon’s shooting death on Market Street are connected. The Sunday afternoon shooting death of another man was a domestic situation and is not related to the others, Foley said.

NO PATTERN

As for the large number of apparently unrelated shootings during a brief time period, Foley said certain times of the year sometimes bring about more homicides, such as December, when domestic-related homicides sometimes rise.

Sometimes the springtime has a higher number of homicides, but it was cold out when all three of the homicides occurred last Thursday through Sunday.

“What I’ve found is it’s awful random,” Foley said of a grouping of homicides. “You would think we would only get them on the weekends, and it doesn’t happen that way,” he said.

“Sometimes you get a stretch where you get nothing, and then all of a sudden everything falls off of the shelf.”

Foley, who at one time served as police chief and more recently was head of the patrol division, said: “Unfortunately we have a violent city at times. And we’re trying to break that with patrols. And the mayor and the chief are trying to put new programming out there to stem that tide.”

NOVEMBER 2017

A listing of homicides dating back 10 years provided by the police department Monday shows that one of the most recent examples of a grouping of apparently unrelated homicides was in November 2017, when there were four homicides between Nov. 25 and Nov. 30, two of them Nov. 28. Vindicator reporting at the time did not indicate any connection between the deaths:

∫ Tyler Kitchen, 19, was fatally shot by a man police said he was trying to rob Nov. 25 at an auto repair shop on the city’s North Side.

∫ Jerry Franklin, 26, was found shot to death in the parking lot of a Logan Avenue gas station on the North Side in the morning Nov. 28.

∫ Colin Brown, 45, was shot and killed about 11:15 p.m. Nov. 28 in the restroom of a South Avenue bar. Johnny Wallace III, 23, was sentenced last July to a life prison sentence in that murder.

∫ A 53-year-old city man’s body was discovered by police Nov. 30 on the South Side.

erunyan@tribtoday.com