EAST STROUDSBURG — One man shot another in the chest Thursday afternoon while trying to demonstrate how to hold a gun in a Barnum Street apartment, with a 14-year-old and toddler upstairs, the victim's girlfriend told police.

Lashawn Marquis Sanders, 26, of East Stroudsburg, is charged with murder in the death of Kenneth Williams Jr., 25, of East Stroudsburg, in the apartment near Stroud Area Regional Police headquarters.

Police responded to the 3:23 p.m. shooting and encountered Ashley Johnson, Williams' girlfriend, holding his head and shoulders as he lay bleeding from his chest just inside the apartment's front doorway.

The shooter, later identified as Sanders, was present. Sanders told police Williams, whom Sanders identified as his brother, had been shot by a male who ran out the apartment's back door.

Sanders claimed to have picked up the gun after the shooting, cleared it to make it safe and placed it on the kitchen table. Police found the 9 mm semiautomatic handgun's serial number obliterated.

Police learned a 14-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy were upstairs in the apartment at the time of the shooting. The girl told police she stayed upstairs with the toddler when hearing the gunshot.

Williams was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

At SARP headquarters, Johnson initially denied knowing what happened. When learning Williams had died, she then told police Sanders had been trying to show Williams how to hold the gun.

Sanders claimed the gun was empty, Johnson said. The gun didn't go off when he pulled the trigger the first time, but went off when he pulled the trigger the second time and fired a bullet into the left side of Williams' chest, she said.

The 14-year-old told police she was upstairs when she heard laughter downstairs and then the gunshot. She said she then heard Johnson ask Sanders why he had shot Williams.

The apartment complex, where the shooting occurred, can be seen down Barnum Street from SARP headquarters. SARP, the state police forensic unit and Monroe County District Attorney's Office detectives taped off the crime scene, awaiting approval of a search warrant before entering the apartment and processing evidence.

Declining to be identified, long-time Barnum Street residents said nothing like Thursday's shooting had ever happened before in the normally quiet neighborhood.

One woman said streams of people were often seen going in and out of the apartment where the shooting occurred.