BOARDMAN The father of a three-year-old Struthers boy who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound told police that he left his gun on a dresser to use the bathroom when his son grabbed the weapon and fired it.

The new information was revealed in a Boardman Police report released on Tuesday.

The report recounts what officers were told on Friday when First Responders were called to a shopping plaza at Mathews Road and South Avenue, where Police found the father performing CPR on his son in a vehicle.

 Before he could return to retrieve the firearm, he said that his son had gotten hold of the gun and shot himself in the head.

A woman at the scene told officers she spotted a man carrying the wounded boy near the Spring Street home where the shooting occurred and offered to drive the two to a hospital.  The woman said she didn’t know the man before that day.

Before they reached the hospital, they pulled into the shopping plaza parking lot in Boardman after the child stopped breathing, so the father could perform CPR.

The boy was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Youngstown, where he died from the injury.

 Boardman police secured the area with crime scene tape before confirming that the incident occurred in Struthers. Struthers police officers were called to the scene and escorted the father and the woman who drove them to the Struthers Police Station for interviews.

 The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office has now taken over the investigation.