OHP: Trooper Escorts Mother And Child To Hospital Following Accidental Shooting

A panicked mother was pulled over as she rushed her bleeding toddler to the hospital. The child had accidentally shot himself. So instead of giving her a ticket, the trooper gave her a special escort.

The child is alive after shooting himself, and that could be thanks to an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper making what may have been a lifesaving decision.

Investigators said the two-year-old boy found the loaded gun inside his mother's purse. The accidental shot went through his left arm. And instead of calling for help, his mother decided to drive him to the hospital.

She was just a couple hundred feet from her northwest Pottawatomie County home off Highway 99 when Trooper Troy Thompson pulled her over for running a stop sign.

“He said that she was very upset, visibly upset as to what was going on. And of course like any mother should be she was concerned for her child,” said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent.

When Trooper Thompson saw the injured toddler in the back seat he realized the toddler needed to be seen by a doctor immediately. That's when he decided to flip on his lights and escort the frantic mother and injured toddler to Shawnee to be seen at the nearest hospital.

Something OHP doesn't often do.

But OHP's Lt. John Vincent said it was a potentially life threatening, special circumstance.

“Yeah, that's a practice that we really try to avoid, but in an extreme situation like this again Trooper Thompson felt it was the best thing to do to help the child,” said Lt. Vincent.

Trooper Thompson alerted Pottawatomie County dispatch who made sure a team of doctors was ready for the toddler when they arrived at St. Anthony's.

The two year-old was then transferred to an Oklahoma City Hospital.

“In the grand scheme of things this worked out very well there was no loss of life luckily,” said Lt. Vincent.

The Pottawatomie County DA's office declined to press charges against the mother, so investigators are ruling the shooting an accident.