MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — A Middletown man was sentenced to two years of probation after his 4-year-old sibling shot himself with an unsecured gun found in the seat of an SUV at Jacot Park.
Yvonte Glover accepted a plea deal in October for a charge of improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle; he was originally indicted on one county of child endangering.
On Tuesday, a judge sentenced him to two years of community control; he could have received a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison.
According to court documents, Glover took the 4-year-old sibling and his three young children to Jacot Park on Grand Avenue in Middletown. When the 4-year-old walked back to the car to get his drink, he grabbed Glover's unsecured Smith and Wesson 9-millimeter instead, firing it into his stomach.
The gun was stuffed between the seat and the center console. The child has since recovered from the through-and-through shot, according to officials.
Jacot Park was full of people on the warm spring evening, and police say there are several witnesses. Dispatchers received two 911 calls.
A woman told dispatchers the vehicle had left the park, probably en route to a hospital.
“A boy came out of the vehicle and he was crying ... he had a lot of blood on his back,” she said. “There was a commotion that it was a gunshot wound.”
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