The parents of twin four-year-olds were arrested over the weekend in east Orlando after the boys were shot with a gun deputies said was left out by their mother, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Keishara Goodrum, 39, was charged with child neglect after she said she left the gun under a couch cushion while sitting at her Calais Circle home Friday night after heavily drinking, investigators said in an affidavit released Monday. She forgot the gun was there, she told deputies, when she got up Saturday to buy groceries to make breakfast for the boys and her three other children.
The children were playing in the living room as Goodrum made breakfast with their father, 40-year-old Maurice Bright. The couple then heard a loud pop that Goodrum “later described as a firearm being shot,” the affidavit continued. The twins were rushed to the hospital with gunshot wounds, with one of the boys described in the affidavit as having “a large amount of blood on his shirt.”
Goodrum and Bright were both arrested on Sunday, and records show they are in the Orange County Jail without bond. Both boys were taken to Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital and are in “critical but stable condition,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said.
While Goodrum faces a child neglect charge, Bright was accused of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, a status seemingly stemming from past convictions for felony-level drug offenses, according to Orange County court records.
