Indiana police, whose work was being broadcast live on cable TV, arrested a father after neighbors reported his toddler son was roaming apartment hallway with a loaded gun, officials said.
The footage was shown on Reelz’s “On Patrol: Live” on Saturday night as Beech Grove police answered a call about a boy, clad only in diapers, allegedly walking unsupervised and pointing a firearm.
Officers spoke to a neighbor who called police and then to the boy’s father, 45-year-old Shane Osborne, who said there was no gun in his apartment, “Live” footage showed.
Four responding police officers were about to leave the building when another neighbor approached and shared with them footage, shot from her doorbell camera, of a gun-toting boy in diapers, “Live” showed.
The officers immediately went back to Osborne’s apartment and eventually found a 9mm Smith & Wesson inside a closed roll top desk, according to the Reelz show.
Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Dep. Curtis Wilson, a “Live” analyst, said he doubts the child randomly put the gun in that desk.
“The way that it was placed in this dresser, the way it was actually strategically placed in there and the top down, it’s unlikely that a little kid was able to do that,” he said.
Osborne was booked on suspicion of felony neglect of a dependent, police records showed, though more charges might be in the works.
Before the firearm was found, Osborne had told cameras he can’t own any guns as an ex-con.
The father’s criminal record includes convictions for fraud and receiving stolen property, state records showed.
It wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday if Osborne had hired or been assigned an attorney. A call to his cellphone went straight to voice mail.