LANSING, Mich. (WOOD/WLNS) — A man has pleaded to a federal weapons charge that was filed after a 2-year-old who accidentally shot and killed himself in Lansing last year.
Avis Coward, 44, of Lansing, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan announced Wednesday.
“There was nothing inevitable about the senseless death of this two-year-old child,”
U.S. Attorney Mark Totten said in a statement. “This incident is just one example of the grim reality we face: that gun violence is now the number one cause of death for our youngest Americans, ages birth to 19. We cannot bring this innocent child back, but these guilty pleas mark an important step toward securing a measure of justice and sending the message that careless gun owners will be held accountable.”
Authorities say 2-year-old King Muhammad got hold of a gun and shot himself in the head as he sat in an SUV with his mother at a Lansing gas station in October 2023. King died later at the hospital.
Federal prosecutors say the gun was among two in the SUV and that both belonged to Coward. They say that Coward had left King and his mother in the SUV to go into the gas station when the gun went off.
“Surveillance video showed … a bullet hole appeared in the car window,” a Wednesday release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “The mother got out of the car holding her child, who had blood on his face from a gunshot wound. As she did so, Coward’s gun fell out of the car.”
A bystander took King into the gas station and tried to get the bleeding under control.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say, Coward put the gun back in the car, broke out the window with the bullet hole and then drove away. Police tracked him down later that day and arrested him.
Authorities say that while in jail, he called friends and asked them to come get the guns because he didn’t want the police to find them. Police ultimately did find the guns.
One of the friends, Gina Schieberl, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to tamper with evidence in the case, admitting to hiding the guns and to moving the SUV so police couldn’t find it. A week after the shooting, investigators found it burned out in a field.
King’s mother, 26-year-old Emma Huver of Lansing, pleaded guilty in April to a federal weapons charge in the case. She will face sentencing on Sept. 16. Schieberl is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 21.
