HOUSTON — Sadly, one Seabrook family knows the pain of losing a child to an unlocked gun all too well. Their daughter was killed three years ago when another kid playing with a gun fired a round into her chest.
“My best friend’s son, he took the magazine out of the gun, but he didn’t clear the chamber. And pointed the gun at her and shot her in the chest," Marentha Sargent said.
Sargent was right there for the last few moments of her daughter’s life.
“Opened the door and she came around the corner, and we caught her," Sargent said. "We called 911, but she was gone really fast.”
At only 14 years old, Adrienne Lambert was killed suddenly and senselessly by a loaded gun on a friend’s kitchen table.
“It does give me some kind of solace that she didn’t suffer," Sargent said.
It’s been three years, but the pain today is just as sharp.
“You just keep going because you have to. I don’t really have a choice," Sargent said.
It's pain that could’ve been prevented.
“That’s why it’s so frustrating and saddening when things happened like what happened today with those babies. Because it is so preventable, and it’s so easy," Sargent said.
She doesn’t know how to make these accidental shootings stop, but she believes the penalties aren’t harsh enough.
“The father who left the not only loaded gun, but had a bullet in the chamber, the one that killed my daughter, got 30 days in jail," Sargent said. “Anytime a firearm is made accessible to anyone and someone is killed because of it, that should be a felony. Someone died, it’s someone’s life.”
So her message is simple: it’s not gun control; it's gun responsibility.
“We’re not trying to take away your firearms at all. We’re just asking that you lock them up when you’re not using them," Sargent said.
That simple lock could be the key to a child’s life.