Utah boy, 8, fatally shoots himself while left alone in a car with a gun

An eight-year-old boy has died after accidentally shooting himself in a car as his mother was shopping at a convenience store, police in Utah said.

The boy was alone in the car around 7.40pm local time on Monday when he shot himself in the head, Jeanteil Livingston of the Lehi City Police Department told local television station KSL-TV.

The tragedy is understood to have happened outside a Maverik gas station in Lehi - a city about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The boy died in hospital on Tuesday morning, police said.The gun had been under a seat in the car, Ms Livingston said, adding that investigators do not know if the safety was ever on.

No charges are currently pending against the boy’s mother, she said. The shooting is still under investigation.

Utah does not have any laws to penalise someone for failing to secure an unattended firearm and leaving it accessible to an unsupervised minor, according to the Giffords Law Centre to Prevent Gun Violence.

The state also does not require unattended firearms to be stored in a certain way, or require a locking device to be sold with a firearm.

The shooting appeared to be "unintentional and self-inflicted", police said in a statement. It is unclear how the boy got hold of the weapon.

Eyewitness Doug Shields said he was filling up his vehicle with fuel when he heard the gunshot and then a woman screaming.

Monday's shooting happened less than two weeks after a five-year-old Utah boy died after accidentally shooting himself with a handgun at his house in Santaquin, which is about 65 miles south of Salt Lake City.

In St Louis, a four-year-old girl died on Monday from a gunshot wound suffered while she was in a house with three other children under the age of 10 and no adults present.

Police are trying to determine who was handling the gun at the time of the shooting.