(NewsNation) — Jaw-dropping surveillance video out of Beech Grove, Indiana, shows a toddler wielding a loaded gun.
The video first aired live on the show On Patrol: Live hosted by Dan Abrams on Friday and Saturday nights on the Reelz network.
“I was stunned watching this play out,” Abrams said.
On Patrol: Live cameras followed Beech Grove police to an apartment complex Friday night. Neighbors reported a diaper-clad toddler pointing a handgun at them.
Once on the scene, an officer asked people at the complex what they observed.
“My son opened the door and the little boy upstairs was standing there with a firearm. I was like shut the door, he’s got a gun,” one woman said.
Police then went up to a second-floor apartment where a little boy came to the door and let police inside. Investigators encountered the child’s father, Shane Osborne, who says he did not know anything about his son playing with a gun and claimed he does not even own a gun himself.
Osborne, 45, reportedly told officers he had been sick in bed all day. The officers urged him to do a better job of keeping the doors locked, so his son does not get out and wander the hall.
As officers started to file out of the complex, another neighbor stopped them to reveal surveillance video from a prior incident: The same little boy playing with a Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter handgun in a hallway near a stairwell of the apartment building.
“The neighbors, of course, were right. All of us on the On Patrol: Live desk were just stunned watching that video as it came in,” Abrams said.
“That’s absolutely tough to see,” co-host Sean “Sticks” Larkin said during the show.
Robert Mercuri, Deputy Chief for the Beech Grove Police Department, agreed with Larkin during an interview on “Dan Abrams Live.”
“It was incredibly tough to watch. It was like watching something, I don’t want to see this. I want to look away. And you and your colleagues both commented on that. And I think that’s the raw emotion when you see that video, so I don’t think people see this very often,” Mercuri said.
Having just watched the video, officers re-entered the apartment to start looking for the gun.
“Alright, we have video of your kid holding a gun,” one responding officer said to the father. “So, do you have a gun?”
Following a brief search, the toddler appeared to lead the officers to a roll top desk.
“One of the officers on scene had asked him where he put his ‘pew-pew’ as in the sound the young boy was making at the time. The little boy then led him down the hall to a roll top desk that was right in the living room of the apartment,” Mercuri said.
Once the desk was opened, officers reported finding a handgun with 15 rounds in the magazine.
“Thank goodness, no bullet was in the chamber,” Abrams said.
Officers eventually arrested the father for felony child neglect. The crime is punishable by up to two and a half years in Indiana. The little boy was taken to his mother’s home.