Police investigate social media photo of toddler holding handgun

SHARE Police investigate social media photo of toddler holding handgun
facebooktoddlergunblurred.jpg

This photo, posted to Facebook, has prompted a Chicago Police investigation. (The child’s face has been blurred by the Sun-Times.) | Photo courtesy of Andrew Holmes

Police are investigating a photo that was posted on social media that shows a child holding a handgun.

A concerned resident walked into the Wentworth District offices on Wednesday to report a picture someone texted him on Tuesday that shows a male holding a child who was holding an unknown model handgun, according to Chicago Police. The text message said that the photo was shared on social media.

Andrew Holmes, a community activist, said somebody showed him the photo about midnight Tuesday, and he reported it to police the next day.

“We just lost a 3-year-old boy last week who had his hands on a gun,” Holmes said. “We’re supposed to be leaders and try to keep guns out of children’s hands, yet here she is with her hands on the trigger.”

Police said it is unknown whether the gun is a firearm or a replica or whether the photo was taken in Chicago.

An Endangering the Life/Health of a Child case report was started, and the incident is under police investigation.

The Latest
The Cubs (19-14) and Alzolay need to find answers to his struggles.
If any longtime watchers of the Cubs and Brewers didn’t know which manager was in which dugout Friday at Wrigley Field, they might have assumed the hotshot with the richest contract ever for a big-league skipper was still on the visitors’ side.
Slain Officer Luis Huesca is laid to rest, construction begins on the now Google-owned Thompson Center, and pro-Palestinian encampments appear on college campuses.
On a mostly peaceful day, tensions briefly bubbled over when counter-protesters confronted the demonstrators at the university’s Edward Levi Hall. An altercation prompted campus police to respond.