North Charleston police arrested a mother Monday in connection with an accidental shooting that injured a teenager last week, authorities said.

The North Charleston Police Department said detectives took the mother into custody three days after a gun accidentally discharged in the Northwoods Estates neighborhood, wounding one of two teens involved. Police also previously arrested the other teenager in connection with the incident.

Details about the charges filed against the mother were not immediately available from the source material, but the arrest signals that investigators believe adult responsibility played a role in how the weapon came to be accessible to minors.

Cases like this one reflect a pattern that law enforcement agencies and public health advocates have tracked with growing urgency. When firearms end up in the hands of teenagers and discharge, the legal exposure for adults in the household can be significant. South Carolina law allows prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against parents or guardians whose negligent storage of a weapon contributes to injury.

The Northwoods Estates neighborhood sits in a residential corridor of North Charleston, a city of roughly 120,000 people that has worked in recent years to address gun violence through a combination of community intervention programs and law enforcement initiatives. The accidental discharge added to a string of incidents that have tested those efforts.

North Charleston police have not released the name of the mother taken into custody, and the identities of the juveniles involved have not been disclosed, consistent with standard practice when minors are part of a criminal matter.

The sequence of events, as described by police, unfolded Friday when two teenagers were together and a gun fired without apparent intent. One teen suffered injuries. The department did not characterize the severity of those injuries in the initial release. By Monday, detectives had completed enough of their investigation to move forward with the mother’s arrest.

The gap between Friday’s shooting and Monday’s arrest suggests investigators took time to trace the weapon’s ownership and determine who bore legal responsibility for its storage. That kind of follow-through matters. Accountability journalism and public records requests have shown in the past that accidental shootings involving minors often result in no adult charges at all, leaving open the question of where those guns came from and who left them within reach.

North Charleston Police Department spokesperson information was not available at the time of publication to provide additional details about the charges or the condition of the injured teen.

The arrested teenager and the mother now face separate legal proceedings. Juvenile cases in South Carolina are handled through the family court system, which operates with significantly less public transparency than adult criminal court. The mother’s case, assuming she is charged as an adult, would move through General Sessions Court, where charging documents and bond hearings are part of the public record.

Gun storage and child access prevention have become recurring issues before the South Carolina General Assembly, though legislation mandating safe storage has stalled in previous sessions. Proponents argue that criminal charges filed in cases like this one underscore the need for a broader statutory framework, rather than relying on prosecutors to pursue accountability case by case.

For now, the North Charleston Police Department has not said whether the weapon was legally owned, how it was stored, or how the teenagers gained access to it. Those details, if and when they become public, will offer a clearer picture of what accountability looks like in practice when a gun ends up in a teenager’s hands and someone gets hurt.

Anyone with additional information about the incident is asked to contact North Charleston police. The investigation remains open, according to the department.