Mother shot dead by two-year-old son

A two-year-old boy shot and killed his mother after finding a gun in the back seat of her boyfriend's car.

Mother-of-three Patrice Price, from Milwaukee, was shot in the back while she was driving. The gun had slid out from under the driver's seat and her son picked it up and fired it.

"The woman was not breathing and had no pulse when deputies arrived," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. "Officials began CPR but she was pronounced dead at the scene."

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Price's boyfriend, who is said to be a security guard, has not been named.

Her mother, May Watson, was said to be in front passenger seat at the time, along with Price's one-year-old son. Watson was apparently able to put her foot on the brake and "steer the car toward the side of the road as her daughter slumped over from the gunshot wound", says the Journal Sentinel.

A relative told local TV station WISN 12 News that Price "was aware the gun was in the car". She had been warned by her mother "about the dangers of driving around with a gun", they added, "but Patrice said not to worry because the safety was on".

The shooting is the second such incident in as many months. In March, a four-year-old boy in Florida shot his mother, Jamie Gilt, after a gun slid from underneath the front seat of the car to the back and he unbuckled himself to get it.

Gilt, a high-profile gun activist who maintained a Facebook page entitled "Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense", survived the shooting.