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A baby boy is dead after his five-year-old brother shot him in the head while playing with a gun.

The nine-month-old infant was rushed to hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, but was pronounced dead on arrival.

The boy found his grandfather’s .22-calibre Magnum revolver that was being kept on a shelf built into the headboard in the master bedroom, police said.

The baby was in a cot in the same room when the gun went off, and a bullet struck him in the head.

“It was just lying out,” Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White said of the gun.

“Little kids are curious. It was in the headboard of the bed, and he found it.”

Paramedics were were called to a home in Elmo, a rural town in northwestern Missouri, by the brothers’ frantic mother, Alexis Widerholt, on Monday.

Sheriff White said the woman had told 911 her son had shot her baby in the head with a paintball gun.

But when the responders arrived at the scene they found it was a real firearm.

Police said there is no reason to believe the shooting was anything other than an accident.

Mrs Widerholt was in the kitchen when she heard a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, according to White.

She went into the living room where she found three of her four children - including the five-year-old boy. Another child was playing with the paintball gun.

The boy was rushed by air ambulance to a hospital in Kansas City, where he was pronounced dead.