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Kent Co. Prosecutor issues involuntary manslaughter charge in 2-year-old's death

Court documents reveal that Markus Nevills Jr. admitted to being high and turning his back on the gun before the toddler got ahold of it.

KENTWOOD, Mich. — Another case in Kent County of an improperly stored weapon has ended in the death of a toddler in Kentwood. 

Court documents reveal that this past Friday, 2-year-old Kiaire McCoy found a loaded gun in a couch cushion and shot himself. 

Markus Nevills Junior is charged in the case with involuntary manslaughter. He was arraigned Monday, and he will return to court in the beginning of June. 

He is the ex-boyfriend of the toddler's mother. The probable cause affidavit says that he admitted to being high and turning his back on the gun.

Nevills also told police that Kiaire was unsupervised at the time and got ahold of the weapon.

"The charge is involuntary manslaughter. The basic charge of involuntary manslaughter is a grossly negligent act or failure to act," Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker says. "Gross negligence is going above and beyond, doing something that is so out-of-bounds, out of the realm of possibility that it's beyond just simple negligence."

He says he's seen cases like this before.

"We did one about two years ago in the city of Grand Rapids where a grandfather left a gun in a dresser drawer next to where kids had access to it and his wife who had dementia had access to it. So it's, you think, just simple common sense would be something that will people could use, but apparently it's not happening," Becker says. "It does get a little bit frustrating, and even maybe a little bit mind-boggling, on how this keeps happening."

He says safe storage of firearms is an important message that he and other officials will continue to push.

"We hope that it will get better because we don't want to deal with these cases. We don't want to see any more kids die," Becker says. 

Research shows that even when kids are trained in firearm safety, they don't always follow that training when unsupervised. That's why officials urge parents to keep their guns locked away at all times.

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