On a gray Sunday morning, under a cloud-shrouded sky, the grieving remembered Codrick Beal.

He loved to play around. He was so full of life.

A "lovable baby."

Just 4 years old.

Suddenly gone.

Codrick was at a baby sitter's house when he found a gun and shot himself Sunday morning, the second young child in Houston to die in an accidental shooting in as many days. The baby sitter was a lifelong friend of the boy's mother, Ashley Beal, who had left him there overnight so she could celebrate her birthday, relatives said.

By midday, the house in the Imperial Green subdivision bore the markers of tragedy. At least eight police cars crowded the suburban street as investigators from the Harris County Sheriff's Office and Precinct 4 Constable passed in and out of the crime scene under a cold drizzle. Neighbors huddled on front porches. About a dozen members of the Beal family gathered in front of the house to mourn and pray.

"My baby is gone," wailed Codrick's mother, who sat with the boy's father in a Chevrolet Tahoe outside the house.

"It's just a terrible accident," Leticia Beal, a cousin of Ashley Beal, said through her tears. "We see it all the time on the news but you never think it'll hit home. It's the most horrible thing."

Codrick's death comes just two days after a 3-year-old boy died after being struck in what investigators characterized as an "accidental shooting" at his home in northwest Harris County.

In that incident, the boy's mother, who was in another part of the house, heard a gunshot and discovered her child with a gunshot to the neck and jaw. The toddler later died at Memorial Hermann Hospital.

Another 4-year-old boy, Ryan Welch, was killed in an accidental shooting the week of Thanksgiving in his Katy-area home. Either Ryan or his 6-year-old brother found a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson in the master bathroom closet and pulled the trigger.

The boys' mother, Krystal Kellermann, told police she was in the backyard talking on her cellphone and smoking a cigarette when she heard the gunshot.

Following a pattern

The three cases follow a tragic template for accidental guns deaths involving children: A child playing with a gun shoots himself or another child. Most such incidents happen in the victim's home and involve a legally-owned, unsecured firearm. Toddlers are at greatest risk.

"It's heartbreaking and infuriating," said San Antonio resident Angela Turner, a spokesperson for Moms Demand Action, a group calling for improved gun safety. "I know these deaths are unintentional but they are also completely unnecessary."

Exact numbers for child gun deaths are difficult to pin down because standards and definitions used by medical examiners fluctuate widely. Most experts believe the numbers are vastly undercounted.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 311 children under 14 died from accidental shootings between 2007 and 2011, an average of 62 deaths a year. An estimated 660 are hospitalized each year for firearm injuries.

However, a report by Everytown for Gun Safety found that at least 100 children in 35 states were killed in accidental shootings from Dec. 15, 2012 through Dec. 14, 2013. Those numbers, which reflect two deaths every week, are 61 percent higher than those reported by the federal data.

The group, which advocates for gun control, examined every publicly reported gun death for the year after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Two-thirds of deaths happened in the victim's home or vehicle. In almost three-fourths of the incidents, the shooter was 14 or under.

Safety suggestion

In addition to securing firearms in their own house, parents also need to check with friends and baby sitters to make sure guns are safely secured, said Turner, a gun owner and mother of three young children.

"There's nothing I wouldn't do to protect my children. As a gun owner, one of the most important things I can do is to lock my guns up and keep them unloaded at all times," said Turner. "People need to lock their guns up."

Authorities would not say where Codrick died, what type of gun was fired or to whom it belonged.

Harris County EMS, on the scene in the morning, returned later to pick up the baby sitter, who fell on the street in front of her home, suffering convulsions as she sobbed in grief.