Florida woman fatally shot by brother while holding her infant after trying to defuse Christmas gifts fight

An argument over Christmas presents at a Florida home ended with a mother of two being fatally shot by her teen brother while holding her baby son in her arms on Christmas Eve, police said.

Abrielle Baldwin, 23, was shot in the chest by her 14-year-old brother in the driveway of their grandmother’s home in Largo and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a press conference on Dec. 26.

Eight seconds after shooting his sister, the 14-year-old was then shot in the stomach by his own 15-year-old brother, who emerged from the home and said, “You shot my motherf—— sister!” Gaultieri said.

The 14-year-old boy is in stable condition after undergoing surgery at the hospital and has been charged with first-degree murder, child abuse and being a delinquent in possession of a firearm.

The incident began when the family was out shopping and the brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.

“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they’re having this big thing going on in the store, and they’re all arguing with each other,” Gualtieri said.

The squabble continued when the family went to the home of their grandmother, who was going to watch Baldwin’s baby son and 6-year-old son when she went to work.

While inside the house, the 14-year-old pointed a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun at his older brother and said he was going to shoot him in the head, Gualtieri said. The younger brother then tried to get the 15-year-old to fight, and the older brother refused. The two were separated by an uncle who was in the home and made the 14-year-old go outside.

When the 14-year-old was out in the driveway, Baldwin tried to defuse the situation while holding her 11-month-old son in a carrier.

“You all need to leave that stuff alone. Why you trying to start it? It’s Christmas,” she said, according to Gualtieri.

The 14-year-old then used “very, very derogatory language” and profanity toward his sister and said he was going to shoot her and shoot the baby, too, Gualtieri said. He then shot her in the chest. Her baby was uninjured because he was in a carrier.

“She was just a woman going about life doing her thing with her two kids,” Gualtieri said. “Now you got an 11-month-old and a 6-year-old boy, and their mom’s dead.”

Only seconds later, the 15-year-old emerged from the home and shot his brother, who was unarmed by that point, with a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun. The 15-year-old has been charged with attempted first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence.

The older brother fled the scene, threw the gun in a nearby yard and went to a relative’s house in Clearwater, Florida, where he was later apprehended. He is now in a secure mental health facility after making statements about harming himself, Gualtieri said.

The 14-year-old will be released from the hospital into the custody of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. The Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney’s Office is determining whether or not he’ll be charged as an adult, the sheriff said.

The gun used to fatally shoot Baldwin has been recovered, while the .45 that was thrown into a neighbor’s yard has not been found after a search by police.

“There’s way too many guns out there on the street,” Gualtieri said. “Way too man crime guns out there, way too many stolen guns. Everybody’s got a gun these days, and the sad part is, that thing’s going to be used in another crime because somebody picked it up.”

Both teens regularly had firearms on them, family members told police.

“These young kids 14, 15 years old, routinely carry firearms, and this is what happens when you got young delinquents that carry guns. They get upset, they don’t know how to handle stuff, so they just take out their guns and start shooting each other, and one of them kills his sister, who’s a mom to an 11-month-old baby and a 6-year-old boy,” the sheriff said.

The 14-year-old has arrests dating back to when he was 12 years old, including being a minor in possession of a gun, disorderly conduct, grand theft auto, auto burglaries, loitering and prowling, battery on a school employee and battery on a law enforcement officer, Gualtieri said. Both brothers have previously been arrested for committing numerous auto burglaries.

Many of the guns obtained by minors are stolen out of unlocked cars in the area, Gualtieri said.

“This proliferation of guns on the streets and guns in this area and guns in the hands of these kids is the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen it this bad. I really think that we need tougher laws to deal with these kids. As you can see with their criminal histories, they are not getting the consequences that they should get that keep them from doing it again and again and again.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com