1-year old Texas boy finds and plays with pistol in rented car

Matthew Bates, age 1

Jaymie Bates, a young mother in east Texas, rented a vehicle from Enterprise.  Imagine her surprise when she found her 1-year old son, Matthew, had found and was playing with a 9mm pistol that was inadvertently left in the vehicle by the previous renter!  

Another vehicle on the same rental lot was also found to have a 9mm gun left by another renter.

The article doesn't say whether the guns were loaded or not.

Neither or the prior renters is apparently being charged.

From an article:

"We got home, thinking everything is cool...fine, I step out of the car for a second. I get back in the car and my son was in the back seat playing with a pistol," said Jamie [sic]. 

It was a terrifying image. She immediately took the gun from Matthew and went straight back to Enterprise where the manager contacted the police. 

"Bottom line is that my one-year-old was playing with a pistol. It could have gone off, and I could have been burying my son. So, what is a mother to do or think," asked Jaymie. 

According to the police report, the gun Matthew found wasn't the only one left sitting in anEnterprise rental car that day. The manager told officers he found another gun in a different car on the lot. 

"More than anything, I just want to tell everybody, 'Hey, if Enterprise is not doing their job as a company and checking their vehicles, maybe we as people need to go behind them and double check,'" said Jaymie. 

Enterprise's corporate office said in an email statement: 

"The safety of our customers is our top priority. On return of each vehicle, our procedure is to clean everything including checking under seats, in the glove compartment, in the center console and in door compartments. We are investigating what went wrong in this particular case, and we will revisit with all of our service agents the proper procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Every gun in the hands of a child must first pass through the hands of an adult.