Young Cousins Killed When Gun Goes Off During Livestream

Two young cousins were shot to death while livestreaming on Instagram during a family birthday party on Friday. St. Louis police first called the deaths of Paris Harvey, 12, and Kuaron Harvey, 14, a murder-suicide, but family members said the shootings were an accident, USA Today reports. The cousins were attending a party for relatives at a downtown apartment when they went into a bathroom for the livestream. Shinise Harvey, the mother of Paris, said she doesn't know who owns the gun or how the children got it, per KSDK.

"She was playing with the gun, but it went off and hit him," Harvey said. Her daughter picked up the gun and it went off again, she said, with the shot evidently hitting Paris. "It was not a suicide," Harvey said. "It was just a freak accident." Police are investigating. "It wasn't a situation where they were arguing or anything like that," said Susan Dyson, grandmother of the cousins. She said she saw them playing with the gun on the video. "Of course, they shouldn’t have been doing it," she said, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I think it just went off. It went off by mistake." (More St. Louis stories.)