It was the afternoon of June 5, 1989, in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when the life-changing events of Sean Smith and his family. At that time, the man was 10 years old and his sister, ErinEight years.

One day like any other, they arrived home minutes before their mother, Lee Smith. Sean went looking for his video games and for some reason decided to rummage through the drawers of his parents’ bedroom. Over there, found a revolverwhich he thought was a toy and decided to play with it.

The night before they had robbed the neighborhood and consequently her father had accused her. “It was my father-in-law’s or mother-in-law’s gun. One of them had it and they gave it to my husband to get rid of it,” Smith told the BBC.

Sean was curious about the gun, so he fired a shot and a misfortune occurred. Erin, who was at her brother’s side, didn’t want to get into trouble and ran away. Unfortunately, the little girl stood in front of the gun at the exact moment it exploded. The bullet pierced his heart.

“The last image I have is of my sister dying on my lap. It’s an image I will definitely never get out of my head,” Sean said. He called the emergency services and in distress he said to the emergency room worker in the United States: “I shot him. It was not intentional (…) My sister is drowning, she’s dead“.

When Smith got home he saw that it was full of police everywhere, but Erin was already dead. The family not only had to recover from the tragedy, but also from the reactions of others.

“At first people were supportive. We were the center of attention, for sure. But then they started taking sides. There were people asking me if I did it on purpose. That was the hardest part. They knew it. “, the woman recalled.

Smith notes that Sean was very concerned about protecting his sister and was in no way on purpose: “If you see any pictures of Sean and Erin together, they were always hugging.”

But the one who had to go through very difficult moments following the tragedy was Sean himself. “I remember wanting to go back to school just to somehow feel normal again,” he explained. But it turned out that the others were more interested in knowing what he had done.

As we entered adolescence, things got worse. Sean confesses that many years have gone by without him talking to his father, either because they blamed each other for what happened or they blamed each other. “I was carrying all this guilt. I have become self-destructive. I started stealing, “acknowledged the man.

Then came the drugs and walked the path of abuse. What helped him get started was his son. He assured that he had no choice but to be responsible because he was “bringing another person”. Eventually, he entered a rehabilitation program and began a recovery process.

Part of this healing consisted in praying in the morning in search of absolution and he confessed to having found serenity by going to the beach early in the morning, when there are few people: “I had the pleasure of seeing so many sunrises, seeing the beautiful sky and that surely connected me with her (my sister) “

In that sense, Smith conveyed a message and said how dangerous it is to have guns in the home: “Kids will always be curious about guns. So having them in the house just encourages that curiosity. It happened in a millisecond and changes your mind. life forever.