Father arrested after 3-year-old boy fatally shot at home in Charlotte
A 3-year-old boy died after being shot in southwest Charlotte, police said Friday morning.
Police arrested the boy’s father, Richard Allen Truitt, 36, and charged him with involuntary manslaughter and failure to secure firearm from a minor, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department news release.
The boy, Jackson, died at the hospital after police found him with life-threatening injuries at a home on O’Hara Drive, according to a CMPD alert. That’s in the Taragate neighborhood in the Griers Fork area, off Sandy Porter Road.
A friend of the boy’s mom created a GoFundMe page to help with funeral expenses. He “got a hold of a loaded firearm and lost his life,” the according to the page.
It is unclear whether the boy was inside a home when police arrived Friday morning. CMPD has not clarified who had the gun Jackson Truitt was shot with.
A police spokesman said officers were called to the area to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon.
Stefanie Mann, 50, had been perched on her side door steps with her cat all morning. At one point at least a dozen first responders were in the “quiet, older residential neighborhood,” the mental health clinician said.
She saw the child’s mother come home after the ambulance had taken her son away, she said. Others had been at the home at the time of the reported shooting, she said.
They were a quiet family, Mann said. She didn’t know them well, but would wave at the boy’s older sibling as they played past her house.
After a brief meeting with news reporters where CMPD provided an update, two older women in separate cars drove by asking reporters what happened.
“A toddler? My goodness,” one said wiping tears from her eyes. She lives around the corner.
“What the hell? I’ll pray for them,” the other said.
This story was originally published April 14, 2023 at 11:20 AM.
