Officers arrested a 21-year-old woman Tuesday after a 7-year-old found a gun in her purse and accidentally shot a 4-year-old with it in a St. Paul residence, police said Wednesday.

The girl was wounded in the leg and was taken to the hospital with a nonlife-threatening injury.

Lyric L. Parker-Wheeler was booked into the Ramsey County jail on suspicion of child endangerment, negligent storage of a firearm and possession of suspected cocaine. She has not been charged.

Parker-Wheeler is not related to the 4- or 7-year-olds, according to police. She had been staying at the residence where the shooting occurred for the past couple of weeks.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and St. Paul City Council member Jane Prince, who represents the Dayton’s Bluff area where the shooting occurred, joined the mayor in saying that the incident underscores the urgency of keeping guns away from children.

“(T)his near-tragedy serves as a stark reminder about gun violence in our city,” St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman in a Wednesday statement. “If you are a gun owner in St. Paul, please be smart – secure guns in your home and model responsible behavior for young people. Unintentional shootings like the one last night in Dayton’s Bluff are preventable.”

The shooting occurred about 6:40 p.m. at a home in the 700 block of East Third Street, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul Police Department spokesman. The 7-year-old boy found the gun in a purse in a playroom and was playing with the gun when it fired, striking the younger child, he said. Police said the children are not related.

Responding officers used a tourniquet to control the bleeding, and the girl was taken to Regions Hospital in St. Paul.

Officers used tourniquet on 4 yo shot Tues. Started carrying them after Officer Dan King was shot & wounded in '12. https://t.co/5HJ3whAWUz — Mara Gottfried (@MaraGottfried) July 26, 2017

There have been more than 150 unintentional shootings by children across the country this year, including two in Minnesota, according to Marit Brock, volunteer leader of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s Minnesota chapter.

“As adults, we have to refuse to see these as mere accidents and instead work together to prevent them, as gun owners and non-gun owners, by practicing responsible storage and making sure our friends and neighbors who own guns know the best ways to keep them out of the hands of children,” Brock said in a statement.

Ramsey County began offering free gun locks to residents last June. They have distributed 2,500 locks at nine sites and, due to the strong community response, ordered 1,100 more in late June to keep the program going, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office. The simple locks, made of plastic-coated metal, are designed to prevent accidental shootings.

People can get the locks at Ramsey County Vital Records at 555 Cedar St. in St. Paul, the Roseville and Shoreview libraries, the Hmong American Partnership and the following St. Paul community centers: Arlington Hills, Hallie Q. Brown and Highland Park, North Dale, and Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center.