WHEATFIELD, Ind. (CBS) – Kandice Cole longs for the life she knew before her four-year-old son Eric found a loaded gun in a babysitter’s home.
In September she stood in her living room, surrounded by images of him. A room once filled with his laughter now stands as a reminder of his absence. His toys now lie untouched. A small basketball hoop hangs on the closet door. Toy cars and action figures line the shelves. A small league photo is above the entrance.
“A lifetime ago,” Cole said. ‘Because I miss him, and I can’t make new memories. All the memories I have are just replaying.”
Erik is one of them dozens of children who found an unsecured gun and unintentionally shot himself or others in Indiana. He is also one of hundreds of children killed by guns in Indiana over the past two decades, according to a CBS News Chicago investigation. This all happened in a state that has failed to pass gun control legislation that advocates say could prevent deaths like his.
“I’m talking about it because I want to save other parents the heartache,” Cole said. “I want to save other children, just like I couldn’t save him.”
No “accident”
It was the morning of August 5, 2017. Kandice and her husband, Ronald, had to work. Her boss volunteered to babysit Eric and Kandice’s 7-year-old daughter.
“I never thought to ask, do you have a gun? Is it locked? And that’s one of the biggest things I wish I could say to myself,” Kandice said.
At one point, the babysitter left the children with his fiancée at his Winfield home, court records said. His fiancée stepped away to go to the bathroom. That’s when Eric found the babysitter’s unsecured, loaded .40-caliber pistol and shot himself. It was two weeks before his fifth birthday.
“We had a birthday party planned and ended up planning a funeral,” Kandice said. “I woke up with two kids and had to go to bed with only one.”
Initial news reports and officials called Eric’s death an accident. But describing shootings like his that way, rather than as avoidable, only deepens Kandice’s pain. She believes this relieves the gun owner of liability.
“It was ‘accident’ all over,” Kandice said. “’It was just an accident. Just a terrible accident.” And we weren’t okay with accepting that.”
The babysitter in her son’s case would later admit in court that he had not properly secured his gun, records show.
Gun violence: a bigger picture
Recordings like the ones who killed Eric are part of a larger story about gun violence in Indiana. The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Everytown ranked Indiana as one of the states with the weakest gun safety laws, in part because the country has no law requiring the safe storage of firearms.
In 2023, Indiana had at least 27 unintentional shootings by children under the age of 18, resulting in 9 deaths, according to Everytown. That’s almost twice as much as in Illinois, where safe gun storage is required by law.
CBS News Chicago Investigators also analyzed CDC data over a twenty-year period. From 1999 to 2020, 804 children under the age of 18 were killed by firearms in Indiana. This could be a murder, suicide or an accidental shooting like Eric’s.
Nearly 24%, or 191 shootings, occurred in Eric’s Northwest Indiana community alone. The number of children killed by guns in Northwest Indiana is double the national rate.
Indiana is one of 24 states without laws requiring safe storage of firearms, meaning guns must be locked and unloaded. Some lawmakers, like Indiana state Rep. Maureen Bauer (D-House District 6), have tried to pass laws aimed at holding gun owners accountable if they don’t safely secure their gun and a child gets their hands on it. So far, these attempts have not been successful.
Bauer said it was even a challenge to pass a law last year requiring all Indiana public schools to send home information on how to safely store a firearm in homes where children are present.
“Every policymaker should explain why that is the case and why they are unwilling to change it,” Bauer said. “It’s happening in every community. It’s not just blue neighborhoods.”
The battle for legislation
Kandice also struggled to gain traction when she shared her story with some lawmakers.
“It’s an uphill battle,” she said. “And you can’t find many Republicans willing to work across borders.”
For years, gun lobby groups like the NRA have opposed bills that would strengthen storage responsibility. Although the NRA’s website says it “supports the storage of firearms in a responsible manner,” the organization also publicly encourages members to oppose gun storage laws and proposals. The group argues that the storage requirements violate their constitutional rights and could prevent gun owners from having easy access to their firearms.
This sentiment was made clear to Kandice in 2018. She mustered the courage to attend the U.S. Senate debate in Indiana and ask the candidates if they would be willing to commit to legislation to hold negligent gun owners criminally liable. One of the candidates then was the Republican senator now Indiana’s newly elected governor, Mike Braun.
“My four-year-old son Eric was murdered in a babysitter’s home when they left a fully loaded gun unsecured and easily accessible to children,” Kandice said during the debate. “Would you support and sponsor a bill that would pass safe storage laws, also known as child access prevention laws?”
Braun does not want to be bound by legislation.
“When it comes to things like storage and things like that, I think the places where we’ve tried to use gun laws generally impact the people who are abiding by the law,” Braun said in part. He also emphasized his support of the NRA.
“I was the person here that gets the NRA endorsement and I’m proud of it because I think they want to make sure that your Second Amendment rights are never infringed upon,” he said.
Years later, when reflecting on her public speech to the Indiana Senate candidates, Kandice criticized Braun’s response. She rejected the idea that law-abiding gun owners would be affected by a safe storage law.
“I’m not talking about the Second Amendment,” Kandice said. “I’m talking about kids having access to guns.”
“I think it’s very easy to put these two issues together,” Bauer agreed. “We are talking about preventing the deaths of children, and we all agree that this should not happen.”
Responsibility and solutions
The gun owner in Eric’s case served less than two years in the Department of Corrections after pleading guilty to reckless homicide and criminal recklessness, followed by time in a work-release program. He was not charged with any gun-related charges.
Kandice said she didn’t think that was enough.
“We didn’t want it to just be a slap on the wrist and you get put on probation,” she said. “Because we didn’t get a slap on the wrist.”
“I don’t think two years is enough,” she continued. “Ultimately, you were the adult who bought that gun. You were the one who should have put it away.”
CBS News Chicago found that the outcome of the criminal case could have been different in a state with stricter gun laws. Everytown ranked California as having the strongest gun laws in the country, in part because of its storage law.
If Eric’s death had occurred in California, his babysitter could have been charged with an additional charge of “criminal storage of a firearm” and jailed for up to three years. If the gun owner had been convicted of a first-degree felony on this charge, he would have been banned from carrying weapons for life.
To continue her efforts in honor of her son, Kandice joined the Be SMART awareness campaign to promote responsible gun ownership and reduce firearm deaths among children. The Centers for Disease Control also recommends storing guns locked, unloaded and separated from ammunition to prevent deaths like Eric’s. Many local police departments offer free gun locks.
In addition to educating families to secure their firearms — and encouraging them to ask about unsecured guns in other homes — Kandice is working to combat the characterization that these shootings are accidents and unpreventable. If the gun had been in a safe or unloaded in her son Eric’s suitcase, she believes he would still be alive today – and 12 years old.
“You can save lives for free. It’s easy, just lock it up,” she said. “Having a gun at your disposal makes it much easier and you don’t get a second chance.”
Kandice and her husband Ronald kept the door closed and avoided their living room for the first few years after Eric’s death. His photos, toys and the memories were too much to bear. But that has changed.
“Then I cried,” she said. “It makes me smile now.”
“He’s not just a tragedy. Before that, he was a fun and loving boy,” she continued. “I can keep him forever by helping spread awareness and helping other parents realize the importance of asking.”
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