Left to right: Alexander Corrie, Cassandra Lutz (Blount County Sheriff’s Office).
A mother and father in Alabama are behind bars after their 4-year-old son got his hands on an unsecured firearm and accidentally shot himself at home — which was apparently chock full of snakes and a young crocodile.
But when the boy’s 39-year-old mother Cassandra Lynn Lutz was at the hospital she made it clear that she wasn’t the one responsible for the shooting, cops said.
“The mother was in the hospital with the child yelling at him making statements like ‘see, this is what happens when you play with guns,”” Blount County Sheriff Mark Moon told reporters this week at a press conference.
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Deputies responded to the hospital the morning of April 4 after the boy showed up to the hospital with a gunshot wound to his arm and leg. When asked what happened, the boy responded to deputies: “I got shot by a gun.”
Cops obtained a search warrant for the home where they found several “interesting pieces of evidence,” Moon said. In addition to marijuana and drug paraphernalia, detectives say they located several unsecured firearms along with around 30 snakes — six of which were dead — and a juvenile crocodile.
The snakes were kept in aquariums inside the home. The live snakes and dead snakes were kept inside of the same enclosures, Moon stated. The crocodile was swimming inside a tank located inside a bathroom, according to Moon. It is illegal to have a crocodile inside a home, Moon said. Fish and wildlife officials took custody of the snakes and crocodile.
Lutz and the boy’s father, 27-year-old Alexander Corrie, are facing a slew of charges including first-degree assault, animal cruelty and possession of a prohibited animal.
The parents told investigators they were at the home when they heard a gunshot. They ran to the boy to see him suffering from a gunshot wound. They used a belt as a tourniquet and rushed the boy to the hospital in their truck. He was later airlifted to a children’s hospital.
Lutz and Corrie agreed to go to the sheriff’s office for an interview.
“The mother did make a statement that she was scared to death that the state of Alabama was going to take her kids away from her and that’s exactly what we did,” Moon said.
Corrie and Lutz remain at the Blount County Jail. The boy was still in the hospital as of Tuesday.
“We’re just very thankful he’s alive and will make a full recovery,” said Moon.
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