An 8-year-old boy remained in critical condition in the latest public update after the shooting near Brookville.
ELLSWORTH, Kan. — The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said a young child picked up a loaded, unsecured shotgun at a home near Brookville on Saturday afternoon, killing a 5-year-old girl and critically injuring her 8-year-old brother in a shooting that remains under investigation.
The case drew state investigators, sheriff’s deputies, highway patrol troopers, wildlife officers and emergency responders to a rural home in Ellsworth County, where officials say two children were found with life-threatening wounds after a 911 call shortly after midafternoon. The immediate questions now center on how the gun was left within a child’s reach, who had control of it before the shooting and whether the completed case file will lead to any charges when it is reviewed by the Ellsworth County Attorney’s Office.
Authorities said the first call came in at about 3:15 p.m. Saturday from a residence south of the intersection of Kansas Highway 141 and Ave. N. Deputies from the Ellsworth County Sheriff’s Office, troopers from the Kansas Highway Patrol, game wardens from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and local emergency medical workers responded to the home and found a 5-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy with critical injuries. Despite life-saving efforts at the scene, the girl died there. The boy was flown to a hospital in Wichita, where officials said he was in critical condition in the latest public statement. About 55 minutes after the original 911 call, the sheriff’s office asked the KBI to assist. State agents and the agency’s Crime Scene Response Team then went to the property. In its preliminary account, the KBI said a young child picked up a loaded, unsecured shotgun and fired, striking the two siblings.
Public officials have released only a narrow outline of what happened, and the details they have held back are central to understanding the case. Investigators have not identified the children, disclosed the age of the child who handled the gun or said how many people were at the home when the shooting happened. They have not said who owned the shotgun, where it was stored before the gunfire or whether any adult was in the room or on the property when it was fired. The KBI said no more information would be released for now because the investigation is ongoing. Even so, the statements that have been made sketch a fast-moving emergency in a sparsely populated area, with local and state officers converging on the scene and trying to stabilize two badly wounded children before one of them died. Those limited official facts have turned the case into a closely watched inquiry in central Kansas, where the next public update is expected to come only after investigators finish their work.
The shooting happened near Brookville, a small central Kansas community where neighbors told KWCH the family was known and the children were often seen playing outside. Barbara and Jerry Pickering, a nearby couple, said the building where the shooting took place was once their business, The Dry Dock Bar and Grill, which they operated until retiring in 2014. Barbara Pickering said she first learned something was wrong when a neighbor reported seeing a helicopter, ambulances, police vehicles and rangers near the property. She said the scale of the response made clear that something serious had happened before residents knew any details. Her account added a layer of scene detail to what officials had already described: a rural home, a burst of emergency activity and a tragedy that quickly became the focus of a countywide and then statewide investigation. For neighbors, the case was not just a police matter but a jarring break in the routine of a place where people tend to know the families who live nearby and notice when children are out in their yards.
The legal path ahead is clearer than the facts that caused the shooting. The sheriff’s office said that once the investigation concludes, the findings will be presented to the Ellsworth County Attorney’s Office. That means the next formal decision in the case will not come from deputies at the scene but from prosecutors reviewing the evidence assembled by the sheriff and the KBI. As of the latest public statements, no charges had been announced and no court hearing had been scheduled. Officials also had not said whether they were awaiting forensic results, autopsy findings, additional interviews or other records before sending the case forward. In rural investigations involving children, those unanswered procedural steps can take on added importance because the public record often grows slowly, one official release at a time. Here, investigators have already established the basic event, a child got access to a loaded shotgun and two siblings were hit, but they have not yet filled in the chain of responsibility around the weapon, the setting or the supervision of the children.
Ellsworth County Sheriff Kenny Bernard addressed the case in terms of its human cost and the basic safety issues it raised. Bernard said firearms should be kept behind a locked door, whether in a gun cabinet or a gun safe. He also spoke about hunting situations, saying gun owners should unload a firearm in the field, carry it back to a vehicle and store it away from ammunition. His comments were among the only public remarks from a named official beyond the written investigative statements. Neighbors, meanwhile, described the family in familiar and sympathetic terms rather than through the language of a police report. Barbara Pickering said the events of the weekend were “just a tragedy” and “something not any family should have to go through.” That mix of official caution and personal grief has defined the public record so far. Investigators have been careful not to release much beyond the bare facts, while people who live nearby have responded to the shooting as a devastating loss involving children they may have seen in everyday life.
For now, the case stands at the investigation stage. In the latest public update, the 8-year-old boy remained in critical condition, the 5-year-old girl had died at the scene and the KBI said the next milestone would come when the completed findings are delivered to the Ellsworth County Attorney’s Office.
Author note: Last updated April 3, 2026.