TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee man faces charges after a child was shot last July by what police described as an improperly stored handgun.
Cerrone Maurice Rollins, 35, was booked into the Leon County Detention Center on Saturday on charges of culpable negligence and the unsafe storage of a firearm. He was released without bail.
On July 15, 2017, a child in a vehicle shot another child in the chest after Rollins left his loaded firearm within easy reach, according to a court document.
The Glock 22 40-caliber semiautomatic was in the center console of the Ford Explorer.
A Tallahassee Police Department officer found Rollins applying pressure with a towel on a bleeding child in the front seat of the vehicle.
The officer had been flagged down by two females while he was traveling nortbound on Mission road near West Tharpe Street and drove to the Exxon Gas Station at 2774 West Tharpe St.
Rollins had gone into a store to pay for gas when, a witness told the officer, she heard a pop she thought was a car backfiring or a tire hitting a pothole but then heard a girl scream.
Rollins said that while he was in the store he heard the "pop" but did not know what it was. A store surveillance tape shows Rollins immediately leaving the store and returning to the vehicle.
The child, whose condition was listed in the report as serious, underwent surgery at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare.
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