African American Male toddler, age 2.
On the morning of June 2, 2021, in the 200 block of South Eastern Avenue in Joliet, Illinois, Angelo Alejandro Shelby was found grievously wounded after a single gunshot inside his family's home.
Officers arrived around 8:30 a.m. and attempted lifesaving measures before he was rushed to a local hospital, where the 2-year-old boy died from his injuries.
Investigators would later say the shot was self-inflicted.
Detectives determined the handgun had been legally owned by his father and kept in a television stand in the living room.
In the telling that emerged that day and, in the weeks, after, police described a split second of tragic access: the toddler, Male and only 2 years old, found the loaded weapon and shot himself in the head.
At the time, the incident was described as an accident that remained under investigation.
In the days that followed, the city's grief gathered around the family.
A fundraiser helped cover funeral costs as neighbors and strangers contributed what they could, and local coverage noted that the boy would have turned three that August.
Visitation was held at Minor-Morris Funeral Home, followed by services at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and burial at Elmhurst Cemetery, rituals that tried to meet a loss too large for words.
As investigators worked, attention turned to the question of accountability. Three months after the shooting, the Will County State's Attorney charged the child's father, Vincent Shelby, with unlawful storage of a firearm within premises, a charge that alleged the Walther. 40-caliber handgun had not been secured in a way that kept it from a child under 14.
A judge set bail at $1,000 and a bench warrant issued at the time of filing. The following summer, after a bench trial in Will County before Associate Judge Chrystel Gavlin, the father was found guilty on the storage charge.
Regulatory records later reflected that the conviction was for a Class C misdemeanor unlawful storage of a firearm.
What never changed was the framing of the shooting itself.
Police called it a “tragic accident,” not the act of an unknown assailant. There were no suspects at large, and the criminal case focused not on homicide, but on the unlawful way the gun had been stored, an omission that, in a heartbeat, left a family and a community without a child.
