The parents of a 3-year-old boy who died from an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound last month have now been charged with allegedly violating a state law that governs the storage of firearms to protect minors, a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Mebane police discovered the victim, 3-year-old Hunter Lee Hatch, inside of a vehicle with a critical injury after responding to a report of shots fired near the intersection of West Lee and South First streets at 7:55 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, according to the police department. Investigators recovered a firearm at the scene and determined that a single round had been fired from within the vehicle, resulting in the injury, based on the Mebane police report.
Hunter Hatch was taken immediately to a local medical facility, where he died shortly afterward, according to the police department. The accidental fatal shooting reportedly occurred while a T-ball game was in progress at Walker Athletic Complex in Mebane.
Michael Ray Hatch, 27, white, male, and Kaitlyn Elizabeth Hatch, 29, white, female, of 6312 Kathy Drive, which is on the Orange County side of Mebane, were served with criminal summonses last week.
The investigation remains ongoing, the Mebane police department said in announcing the charges.
Each summons alleges that the defendant “resides in the same premises as a minor and owns or possesses a firearm, and stores or leaves the firearm in a condition that [it] can be discharged and in a manner in which the person knew or should have known that an unsupervised minor would be able to gain access to it…and causes personal injury or death with the firearm not in self-defense.”
In a brief interview with The Alamance News, Mebane police chief Mitch McKinney said this week that the charges had been filed after consultation with Alamance County district attorney Sean Boone.
As to whether the charges against the boy’s parents were compounding the family’s tragedy, McKinney said the child’s death was “entire preventable.” He said the culture needs to change to treat firearm safety, particularly in the presence of children, more seriously.
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Both parents are currently scheduled to make a first appearance in Alamance County district court on Thursday, July 3, according to the court files.
A conviction for failing to properly store a firearm to protect a minor from an accidental discharge, currently a Class 1 misdemeanor, carries a possible sentence of probation, community service, and/or up to 120 days in prison, based on North Carolina’s current sentencing laws.
Earlier this spring, four Democratic state house representatives sponsored a bill that would’ve increased the penalty for violating the firearms storage law. The bill sought to reclassify the offense as a Class A1 misdemeanor – the most serious category, which includes offenses such as with a deadly weapon, assault on a female, child abuse, sexual battery, and stalking – and increased the prison sentence from 120 days to 150 days.
However, a day after it was filed, the bill was referred to the house rules committee and failed to make it out of the house before the “crossover” deadline, effectively rendering it dead for the remainder of the current legislative session.
Meanwhile, a fundraiser launched via the GoFundMe website to assist the Hatch couple with their son’s hospital and funeral expenses had generated $11,498 in donations as of press time Wednesday.
