What was supposed to be a slumber party last month celebrating a friend’s birthday took a tragic turn when a 12-year-old Jacksonville girl was struck in the head by accidental gunfire.

Ra’Mya Eunice died Thursday evening after she was removed from life support. Her death marked the second local child killed as a result of unintentional shootings, and the fifth time a child has been shot here accidentally, since February.

But despite a state law that allows authorities to seek charges when children are wounded or killed as a result of guns being left accessible to them, prosecutors have not brought negligence charges in any of those cases.

How and when to apply that law is left up to prosecutors. Experts say the reasons prosecutors avoid enforcing that law range from lack of evidence to not wanting to compound a family’s grief.

A spokesman for State Attorney Melissa Nelson provided the following statement in response to a reporter’s questions about her office’s handling of unintentional shootings: "These situations are tragic. When we learn of these cases, we analyze each to determine whether there is criminal negligence."

Harry Shorstein, a former state attorney, prosecuted several criminal negligence cases when he ran the office Nelson now leads. In a phone interview, Shorstein discussed the challenges of finding out who’s accountable for accidental gunfire and explained how he handled such cases when he was in charge.

"Instead of setting a hard-and-fast rule that you’re going to prosecute every case that could be prosecuted, or you’re not going to prosecute any of them, you have to look at each case individually," Shorstein said.

Florida became the first state to adopt a safe-storage law in 1989, and 17 other states and the District of Columbia have since followed suit. These laws require gun owners to take steps to keep children from getting their hands on guns, meaning prosecutors can pursue charges against adults when loaded weapons are left out or unsecured.

It is illegal in Florida to store a loaded gun where someone would expect a minor to reach it without a parent or guardian’s knowledge. The law requires loaded guns to be either stowed inside a locked container or secured with a trigger lock. (There are exceptions: For example, if a child obtains a gun as a result of trespassing, then the law does not apply.)

"We very, very seriously reviewed the records and the individuals involved," Shorstein said. "Where was the child when the gun was found? Where were the mother and father or other responsible person? What was done to prevent this?"

Gun-violence experts credit these laws not only with reducing the number of unintentional shootings of young children but also curbing the number of gun-related suicides among their older peers.

Still, there are skeptics who doubt the law’s benefits and contend that keeping guns locked up is pointless because gun owners who get them for protection won’t have them readily available during emergencies.

"The best research we have says that homes with guns in them are more likely to be the site of suicide or accidental gun deaths than homes without guns," said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "So if you’re going to bring a gun into your home, it ought to be stored safely to minimize those risks."

"There’s also research that suggests that these laws are more likely to be effective if the punishment is greater, if the punishment is a felony as opposed to a misdemeanor," Vernick added.

In March 2006, Shorstein charged Ronda Webb with culpable negligence after her 5-year-old daughter was killed by the child’s 8-year-old brother with a gun Webb got for protection. Police said the gun was left where her son could find it. While culpable negligence is a third-degree felony carrying a maximum five-year prison sentence, Webb received five years’ probation.

"If you took every precaution to see that a child could not access a gun and the gun is not readily available to a child, then the gun would be useless to the person who got it for protection," said Shorstein, who likened the prosecutor’s dilemma to a "balancing act."

Two children have been killed and three more injured in Jacksonville since February as a result of accidental gunfire, according to Times-Union records.

In the most recent case, a 3-year-old boy was shot in the arm May 17 at a home in the 9200 block of North Whisper Glen Drive. The boy was hospitalized, but police said they expected him to be OK. Little information has been released since then.

That shooting followed another that occurred May 14, less than 3 miles away. In that case, a 5-year-old was shot in the chest at a home on Vining Street while his father was in the other room, according to police. Neighbors said the boy is recovering.

In February, an 8-year-old boy killed his 5-year-old sister and wounded a 4-year-old neighbor boy at Roosevelt Gardens apartments on North Lincoln Court, police said. The victim’s mother’s boyfriend, accused of bringing the gun into the home, was charged with possession of a firearm by a felon.

Ra’Mya was attending a sleepover at a friend’s home on Willow Branch Avenue when gunfire erupted about 1:45 a.m. April 30. She was asleep on a couch when she was struck in the head by a bullet fired by the homeowner’s 11-year-old nephew in what was described as an accident, according to Times-Union news partner First Coast News. How he got the gun remains unclear.

The shooting sent Ra’Mya to UF Health Jacksonville where she underwent surgery. But after the operation, physicians advised her family that the 12-year-old’s brain did not show any activity. With loved ones huddled around her bedside, she died Thursday evening within moments of being taken off life support.

Davett Gordon, Ra’Mya’s cousin, said the family had been bracing for that moment since physicians expressed doubt about her recovery. Gordon said she is holding up despite the tragedy, but now the family is focused on the search for answers to their lingering questions — and justice.

"The next step is to get justice for her. Someone has to be held accountable for this," said Gordon, adding that she believed a negligence charge would be warranted for the parent who supervised the slumber party. "Parents need to be more involved and know what’s going on."

Neither Gordon nor Terri Eunice, Ra’Mya’s grandmother, buy the narrative offered by the friend’s family that the gun was found in an abandoned home, citing conflicting stories provided by those present at the sleepover. Eunice wondered why there was no adult in the room with the children and where the gun came from.

"When police came to the scene, the gun was placed back in the abandoned house. It should have been left at the scene. To me that says someone was trying to hide something, to me you’re trying to cover something up," Eunice said.

"I really do want someone to be held accountable," said Eunice, noting she believed both the minor who pulled the trigger and the adults at the home at the time should face prosecution.

Garrett Pelican: (904) 359-4385