A US toddler has been killed after accidentally shooting herself while apparently mistaking a gun for a Nintendo Wii video game controller.
Cheyenne McKeehan, 3, picked up the pistol from a living room coffee table and fired it into her abdomen while her mother sat a few feet away, the Tennessean reported.
The girl, from rural Tennessee, had learned to fire a gun from playing a Nintendo Wii game with a special gun-shaped controller, a statement from the Wilson County Sheriff's office said.
Sheriff Terry Ashe said parents need to make sure they keep guns out of reach of children, especially considering the similarity between the Wii controller and an actual handgun.
"If you have a live handgun and a toy that looks the same — for parents some bells and whistles need to go off," he said.
"You can see by the comparison of the toy weapon and the real weapon that there's little chance a three-year-old would differentiate between the two."
The semi-automatic handgun belonging to Cheyenne's father Douglas Cronberger was normally left in a cabinet but had been loaded and left out after he thought he heard a prowler.
When he came back inside, Mr Cronberger left the gun on the table and went to bed, reports said.
Cheyenne was pronounced dead soon after her arrival at hospital.
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