A TERRIBLE MISTAKE
Arabella Watts had made bad choices before, but December 4, 2021, was the worst. A new law in Washington was intended to prevent her terrible mistake. It did not.
She was 24 years old at the time. She had a felony conviction for assault, and she had struggled with addiction, but she was trying to get her life together for her son and daughter, both little toddlers. The three were living with Arabella’s father while she steadied herself. That early December morning, she took the kids to visit their dad, Jesse Kitson.
Jesse lived in a mobile home in Granite Falls. He later told investigators he was worried about “tweakers” in the neighborhood. That was part of the reason he had a Remington 1858 .44-caliber revolver. But why he left it on the coffee table is what Arabella will wrestle with the rest of her life. She says she didn’t want it around the kids. Why she didn’t insist on Jesse putting it away — that haunts her too.
Arabella says her strong but wobbly daughter Naleyna was standing, grasping the side of the table. Arabella’s head was in her phone. Then she “felt and heard something go off. I knew it was the gun.” It had fallen off the table, she tells me during a phone call from Washington Corrections Center for Women, “I picked up my daughter and thought she was fine. Then I see the blood start pouring out.”
Arabella’s pleas to God weren’t enough. Naleyna died. She was just a few weeks shy of her first birthday.
Arabella was paying the ultimate price. But it was just the beginning.
THE LAW
“It’s a difficult circumstance, there’s no doubt about it,” says Snohomish County Prosecutor Jarett Goodkin, “but just because the person’s lost their child doesn’t mean we just ignore the fact that there’s a possible criminal accountability for the actions that happened in that case.”
With Arabella’s case, Goodkin looked to RCW 9.41.360. It went into effect in July 2019 after Washington voters passed the gun control measure Initiative 1639. A gun owner can be found guilty of a second-degree felony, “community endangerment due to unsafe storage of a firearm,” if a minor gets access to the gun and it causes personal injury or death.
The law is intended to prevent the kind of devastation Arabella’s family experienced.
NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION
KIRO 7 and our sister stations across the country launched an investigation to determine how often these tragedies occur. We looked through media accounts going back a decade, with young kids, 12 and under, getting their hands on unsecured weapons and accidentally shooting themselves or another child. We found more than two thousand cases.
A very small share of those cases happened in Washington: 13 out of 2,071 incidents we found. It’s a very small sample size, but while the unsafe storage law aimed to prevent those injuries and deaths, the numbers show another story.
Two cases happened in the three years before the law went into effect in 2019. In the seven years after, the rate of accidental shootings involving young kids more than doubled: 11, including the death of Arabella’s daughter.
LIMITS OF LAW
Those numbers don’t surprise Prosecutor Jarett Goodkin. He says everyone already knows a gun can be extremely dangerous in the hands of a child. Everyone knows it can lead to tragedy. “It should be the thing that says, ‘I need to securely store my firearm,’ Goodkin points out. “So, is criminal prosecution really going to change your behavior if that circumstance doesn’t? I think a lot of people would argue the threat of prosecution isn’t going to change our behavior simply because you’re worried about a criminal charge.”
Arabella agrees. She says at some level she understood the gun was a threat. But it didn’t seem real until it was too late.
The loss of her daughter is the worst punishment she could face. But there are so many others.
It took two years before she and Jesse Kitson faced charges of unsafe storage and manslaughter. Arabella was still grieving her little girl, but by then she had gotten a good job and felt like she had turned the corner. She was also pregnant with their third child.
They both reached plea deals. Arabella received a sentence of almost six years. She gave birth to her second son in prison.
THE PUNISHMENT
Arabella acknowledges she needs to take responsibility for her role in what happened, but her heart aches that her sons are also paying the price. Her mother is raising them in a town six hours from the prison. They can’t visit much, but they do video calls whenever they can. Arabella also sends them paintings and letters. She sometimes writes to them about their sister. It’s painful, but it also helps.
“She was really beautiful, and I just loved that little girl. She had a really bubbly and fiery personality,” she tells me as the prison call drops in and out.
Arabella hopes that by telling her daughter’s story she can get through to other parents like her — parents who know the danger of guns, but, for some reason, ignore it.
“I want to honor her. What happened not only affected her, but my other children and my whole family. I know that my daughter is very, very important, and I hope I can help other people, other kids.”
She is ending our call on a strong and hopeful note. Then her voice breaks. “I think about it every single day.”
Watch KIRO 7 News Monday at 5:30 p.m. for the full story.