KEY POINTS:
A seven-year-old Napier girl, left critically injured after being accidentally shot through the head at her Maraenui home last Saturday by her father, is improving.
Detective Sergeant Brian Schaab of the Napier CIB said the girl, in Starship children's hospital in Auckland, had been taken off a ventilator and was now breathing on her own.
Mr Schaab said the man was naturally upset about what had happened and police were not opposing bail at his court appearance today.
He said police were told the man had loaded the air gun to shoot a mouse, and had stepped in to take it off his five-year-old son who had come across it and picked it up.
The gun went off and the pellet struck the girl who was playing nearby.
Police were refusing to rule out that a family argument had taken place just before the shooting.
Detective Emmet Lynch said a 30-year-old local man would appear in the district court today charged with careless use of a firearm causing injury.
Five people were at the house in Gilray Ave, Maraenui, when the loaded weapon went off, he said.
They were two adults and three children aged between 9 and 9 months.
"The situation is clearly a family-related incident," Mr Lynch said. "To my mind there is no direct link with any gang."
The shooting happened inside a small, confined space, he said.
While a major concern centred on safety issues, the detective would not rule out that an argument had taken place before the shooting.
"We're still looking at the general circumstances there, why it was loaded, how it came to be discharged inside the dwelling."
Police would be in a better position to make further comment after the court hearing today, Mr Lynch said.
Deloris Kingi, who has lived in Gilray Ave since 1969, said the street was largely crime free, although police had made frequent visits to it recently.
"Just coming around because of neighbours complaining. We got new neighbours in and they complain just because they don't know us. We've been here longer than anyone."
The house in which the shooting happened was at the far end of the street, she said, and the family who lived there largely kept to themselves despite being part of her whanau.
"I hardly ever see them out walking, they go by car. They never have parties. I have more parties on the street than anyone else."
Mrs Kingi was shocked when the children of the street told her on Saturday evening an accident had occurred.
The family at the home where the airgun went off were young. The man was aged in his early 30s and the woman in her late 20s. The couple took care of about six children, the eldest being about 11 and the youngest a baby.
Mrs Kingi said Maraenui did have a gang element but she believed the couple had no affiliations with them.
The gang members, who lived around the corner on another street, personally gave her no trouble. "They know me, they say, 'Hello nan'."
Workers at the Maraenui Dairy, Challenge service station and Price Cutter said customers had commented on the shooting yesterday, although not much was being said.
One person said a "red gang, the one with the doggy", lived in the area.
Another said the incident was "very hush-hush" but she did not know why people were being so silent.
Rising toll of young gun victims
* A 7-year-old girl from Maraenui in Napier was shot in the neck on Saturday in what police describe as a domestic incident.
* The child was critically ill in the Starship hospital last night.
* A man has been charged with carelessly discharging an airgun.
* The shooting is the second in a week involving a child. Wanganui 2-year-old Jhia Harmony Te Tua was killed by a bullet fired by a local gang member on May 5.
* There have been at least three other airgun shootings this year involving children aged 16 or under.
- with HAWKES BAY TRIBUNE
