5-year-old Detroit girl dies after accidentally shooting herself with grandmother's gun

A 5-year-old girl accidentally killed herself with a gun she found under her grandmother's pillow, the Detroit News reports.

The child was not named by the newspaper, but the News reports the shooting took place when the grandmother left her bedroom to cook downstairs around midnight. The girl found the weapon and accidentally shot herself.

Relatives told the local CBS station her name was Mariah Davis. She was playing with the weapon when it went off and a bullet struck her neck.

“It was an awful tragedy that has all of us shook up and our heart broke,” her aunt, Freda Davis, told WWJ 950. “It seems like our souls was ripped out of us, she was a lovely little girl, all she loved to do was sing.”

Two other children, aged 1 and 3 years, were also home but were not physically harmed.

The girl's death was the fifth time in the six weeks since Easter that a child has been shot or shot themselves in Detroit, the News reports.

Just last week, a 9-year-old boy was admitted to a hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, after he had found a gun on a lawn.