A three-year-old boy got ahold of a gun and shot himself.
First responders rushed to the house on Plymouth Street in Norfolk.
Neighbors say the boy's father was holding his son tightly.
"It was just awful. He was trying to tell police what was going on and he held him in his arms and the first thing he did was get him in the ambulance," said Joan Noble, a neighbor.
Noble says the family of four moved in a couple of years ago.
It broke her heart when she saw the boy come out of the house and he wasn't moving or making any noise.
"He just looked like he was just asleep," Noble said.
The little boy was shot in the hand.
"That made me feel a little bit better and I was praying for him to make sure that he's going to be okay," Noble said.
The three-year-old is described as sweet and playful which makes today even harder for neighbors to grasp.
"He's pretty gregarious, just runs around, usually goes up and down the street on his bike with his brother," said Rita Catalino, a neighbor who lives next door.
"He's always, you know, played with like any other boy, like little water guns and all that kind of stuff, and when you're that little you don't know the difference," Noble said.
Police aren't saying much about the shooting, like how the little boy got ahold of the gun.
"I'm sure it was just an accident," Noble said.
