Prison worker charged with unsafe gun storage after son uses pistol in suicide

MARYSVILLE, Wash. — Prosecutors say a Washington state prisons employee didn’t properly secure her gun and her 12-year-old son used it to die by suicide.

That lead to a first-of-its-kind criminal charge in Snohomish County.

Jennifer Wright had taken her pistol out a previous night as she prepared to go to a search-and-rescue academy.

She says she put it back in the kitchen drawer, unloaded. She put ammunition in a different drawer.

After getting home from work, she checked on her son and he had shot himself. Her 9 mm was on his bed.

Prosecutors charged Wright with first-degree unsafe storage of a firearm, a felony.

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