Woman Shot After Mistaking Gun For Lighter

Police today were trying to figure out how a .22-caliber revolver wound up on the ground outside a Banning mobile home, where a woman mistook it for a cigarette lighter and accidentally fired it, wounding her 12- year-old daughter.

“We’re looking into the gun, how it got there and who left it there,” Banning police Sgt. Alex Diaz said.

The girl, whose name was not released, was shot around 5:40 p.m. Sunday outside the mobile home in the 100 block of North Phillips Avenue, Diaz said.

The girl’s mother, 30-year-old Rachel Avila, and her daughter were talking with friends when Avila spotted what she thought was a gun-shaped cigarette lighter on the ground, picked it up and pulled the trigger to light it, Diaz said. The weapon discharged, firing a bullet that ricocheted off the ground and into her daughter’s upper arm, he said.

The girl was treated at San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital and released.

“(The wound) was more superficial,” Diaz said.

The weapon was a North American Arms .22-caliber, Derringer-style revolver, he said.

Diaz advised residents not to handle objects resembling a firearm or suspicious devices, and instead call police for help, he said.

Anyone with information about the weapon was asked to call the Banning Police Department’s detective bureau at (951) 849-1194.