Toddler fatally shoots 4-year-old sister at Pennsylvania gas station

A 2-year-old boy fatally shot his 4-year-old sister at a Pennsylvania gas station Tuesday, authorities said.

The children were in a car parked at a gas pump in Chester, south of Philadelphia, Chester police said in a statement.

The toddler had been handling the weapon, the police department said. It wasn’t immediately clear what kind of gun it was or how he got it.

A 2-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a 4-year-old girl at a gas station Tuesday morning in Delaware County, Pa., police said. WCAU

Detective Rhaheem Blanden said the children were siblings.

The girl was immediately taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead, the police department said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said detectives from his office were helping Chester police investigate the “absolutely tragic” shooting.

“Everybody in the community of Chester, in Delaware County, myself included, all of us are just heartbroken to think of what happened to this poor child,” he said, according to the newspaper.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit website that tracks shootings in the U.S., 258 children 11 and younger have been killed or injured by gunfire this year.

More than 1,000 were wounded or fatally shot last year, the most in the site's eight years of data.