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[Merrick]

mine: Sylvia Plath Re-incarnated

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Authorities say a four-year-old girl from Salley is recovering after she grabbed a gun out of her grandmother's purse and shot herself in the Harbison Blvd. Sam's Club Monday.

Now police say her grandmother may face charges.

We're told the girl is in stable condition and is now on a ventilator. Authorities say she may be able to be released in a few days.

The child underwent emergency surgery Monday afternoon at Palmetto Health Richland Memorial Hospital.

CPD spokesman Brick Lewis says no major organs were hit by the bullet.

"The child was shot just below the sternum and the bullet traveled downward and exited just above the top of her buttocks," says Columbia Police Capt. Thomas Dodson.

Someone at the hospital found the bullet. It was trapped, possibly, in the girl's clothes. The .32 caliber slug somehow missed the child's spine and vital organs.

"Believe it or not probably the ballistics on a .32 are less damaging than that of a .22 or .25. The velocity of the round is slower. The mass is a little bit more on the bullet. The .22 because it weighs so little and travels so fast, tends to ricochet around inside the body so it's probably actually better that it was a larger caliber round," says Dodson.

Investigators believe the child was sitting in the shopping cart of her grandmother, Aiken County Magistrate Donna Hutto Williamson, when she pulled the gun out of Williamson's purse and accidentally shot herself in the chest.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8451232

[madinmaryland]

1. That's sad.

[DS1]

2. No, it was Son of Sam's Club, get it right, media