The baby girl is 12-months-old and in the two videos the two adults in the background were having fun with the child putting a gun in her own mouth and rubbing it up against her face. The male can be heard trying to get the baby to say ‘pow.’
The mother of the child, Toni Wilson, 22 and her boyfriend, Michael Barnes, 19, have been charged with child neglect, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, and allowing a child to possess a firearm. Both are in jail.
The phone was taken from the male, 19-year-old Michael Barnes, after he was arrested in a sting operation; Barnes tried to sell a gun to an undercover police officer after posting an ad on social media. The mother told police the gun in the video is a pellet gun but police say it is a .40 caliber handgun.
Police called the video “mind-numbing.”
“When we try to do all the things we do to encourage these kids to be good members of our community, and you see somebody that’s working that hard against it,” Sgt. Jason Cullum of the Evansville police told local Channel 14 News.
“It just makes you wonder how many other children may be living in this type of situation and what’s the outcome is going to be for them, and what’s the outcome is going to be for our community if these things do go on.”
When the mother was taken into custody, along with the 12-month-old girl, twin one-month old babies were in the home. The three little ones have been placed in the care of a government emergency care service.
