A Pasadena man was charged Wednesday with allowing a minor access to a firearm stemming from the accidental shooting that left a child wounded at Freetown Elementary School in Glen Burnie, authorities said.
The man, Eashan John Stefanski, 34, was served a criminal summons Thursday morning, according to the Anne Arundel County Police Department. Police also seized his other weapons.
A 7-year-old boy accidentally shot himself in the finger Wednesday morning while he was in a classroom with nine other students and a teacher, according to charging documents.
The boy was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, officials said. The teacher acted quickly to secure the weapon and help the child get medical attention, school officials said.
Police said the 7-year-old lives with two siblings, his mother and her boyfriend, Stefanski. When police went to their home in Pasadena after the shooting, they asked Stefanski to take them inside to inspect how his guns were stored.
Police said Thursday they did not have information on whether the boy remained hospitalized.
A local volunteer with the Maryland chapter of Moms Demand Action said in an emailed statement Wednesday that the shooting is “a terrifying reminder that our children are never safe when adults fail to secure their firearms.”
“From making secure storage the non-negotiable norm, to passing new and innovative gun safety legislation that will keep our communities safe, we must take action,” Khristy Kartsakalis wrote. “We owe it to our children.”
A detective found an unloaded handgun under a mattress. In the bedroom closet, the detective found two unloaded handguns in gun boxes with gunlocks on them, along with keys to the gunlocks and an unloaded rifle with a gunlock, police said.
The detective also found a gun box missing its firearm but containing the gunlock, the keys to it and a loaded magazine, police said. This was the box, police said, that held the Glock 27 semiautomatic pistol that was accidentally fired at Freetown Elementary.
Police also found a handgun in Stefanski’s car.
“I determined the firearms were not properly stored to keep them from children and seized them for safekeeping,” detective T.J. Baldwin wrote in charging documents.
Stefanski does not have an attorney listed in online court records. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
The charge is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of no more than $1,000.
Anne Arundel County makes gun safety locks available free to all residents. They can be picked up at any library branch. The county also has a Gun Violence Intervention Team as part of its Department of Health.
The team works to tackle gun violence in the county as a public health issue. Its next community event is scheduled for March 5 at the Edgewater library and will focus on the importance of secure gun storage.
The school sent a message to families about the incident around 10:15 a.m. Wednesday. All students were dismissed around 11 a.m., either picked up by parents or transported home on normal bus routes.
Some parents were frustrated and scared Wednesday, in part because some social media pages posted unverified information about the shooting before school or police officials could share details.
Capt. Jacklyn Davis, who oversees the Northern District Police Station in Anne Arundel County, urged parents to ignore rumors and trust the department would share verified information as quickly as possible.
“Have trust in us that we will get to the bottom of this, of where this child got this gun,” she said.
School started and ended as scheduled Thursday at Freetown Elementary, county school officials said.
Superintendent Mark Bedell on Wednesday commended school staff for the work they did in the immediate aftermath of the accidental shooting, and he thanked parents for giving them grace.
He said the school system would continue working with other organizations, including Moms Demand Action, to stress the importance of secure firearms storage.
“We want our kids to be able to come to school, and we want them to be able to learn in a safe environment,” he said. “We have an opportunity as a community to come together and to do everything that we can to prevent these types of scenarios happening in our schools.”
This article has been updated.
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