Warning: Article has detailed accounts of the shooting
Breanna Gayle Devall Runions, 25, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Evangaline Gunter.
The child’s parents, Adam and Josie Gunter, told ABC affiliate WATE that Evangaline had been in temporary custody at a home in Rockwood, which Runions shared with girlfriend Christina Daniels and another child, a 7-year-old girl.
Before the shooting, Evangaline and the older girl were being punished that morning by Runions for not waking up the women and for eating Daniels’ food without permission, according to the warrant and a statement from Russell Johnson, district attorney general for Tennessee’s 9th Judicial District. Runions struck both girls with a sandal before forcing them to stand in different corners of the women’s bedroom, authorities said the older girl told them.
After the shooting, the women drove Evangaline to a nearby Walmart location to meet an ambulance, Roane County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Boduch told the Roane County News, and the vehicle transported the girl to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Boduch could not immediately be reached by HuffPost.
Given the psychological effect of owning a gun, or having access to one has on a person, I honestly feel like we’re in the same mental health territory as any behavioral antagonist, like leaving an addictive substance around an addict. You take a gun and put everything it means in a person’s hands - the power, the mythology, the kind of baggage it comes with in this country - and it’s gonna have some kind of effect.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve witnessed, and am aware of many cases where drivers of certain kinds of cars - big, fast, whatever - do stupid, reckless, dangerous, even murderous things because of the feeling of power and control their vehicle gives them. It’s the psychology of the damn things that makes people crazy.
We have a phrase for it, oddly enough: “it’s like leaving a loaded gun on the table”