Guilford County man charged after 8-year-old brother dies in gunshot incident

A child’s death inside a home off U.S. Highway 29 North has put a harsh spotlight on a simple but often fatal failure: leaving a firearm unsecured where children can reach it. Gabriel Sanchez, 8, was shot around 4:40 p.m. on May 25 at 7679 U.S. Highway 29 North in Reidsville and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Luis Alberto Sanchez Jr., 19, Gabriel’s older brother, was charged June 1 with misdemeanor storage of firearms to protect minors. Court records say Sanchez Jr. lived in the same home, possessed the firearm and left it in a condition where it could be discharged and accessed by an unsupervised minor. Investigators determined the gun had been left unsecured and available to multiple juveniles in the residence. No additional charges were expected at that time, and the cause and manner of death remained pending with the state medical examiner.

Sanchez Jr. was served with a criminal summons and was expected in court June 16. The case is being treated as a deadly storage and supervision failure, not as an intentional shooting, and that distinction matters for families across Guilford County and surrounding communities where children live in homes with firearms.

North Carolina’s child access prevention law, G.S. 14-315.1, makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor for a person who lives with a minor and owns or possesses a firearm to store or leave it in a way that they knew or should have known would allow an unsupervised minor to access a gun that can be fired. The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force says the state enacted that law in 1993 and has urged lawmakers to strengthen it. The task force also says firearm deaths among North Carolina children have more than doubled since 2014.

National data shows why the warning is so urgent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among U.S. children and teens ages 1 to 19 in 2020 and 2021. Research from Everytown Research & Policy has found that states with secure-storage or child-access-prevention laws tend to have lower rates of unintentional child shootings than states without them.

The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office also points families to prevention through its Community Resource Unit, which focuses on crime prevention, safety education and community programs. In a case like this, the legal consequence is immediate, but the practical lesson is broader: guns stored in homes with children need to be locked, unloaded and kept separate from ammunition every time.