A 12-year-old girl found a loaded gun in a Frederick County Walmart on March 26.
The gun was left on top of a toilet paper dispenser in the women's bathroom, the Northern Virginia Daily reported.
After finding the gun, the girl told her father, Seth Flickinger, who is an employee at the store. Flickinger brought the gun, a .38-caliber Taurus Ultralite revolver, to the store's customer service desk.
Authorities have charged the owner of the weapon, 49-year-old Tammy Renea Costello, with recklessly leaving a loaded firearm endangering a child. According to court documents, Costello had left the store and was on the way home before she realized that she was missing the weapon. She went back to the store to look for it, but the Walmart store had already turned the gun over to the Frederick County Sheriff's Office.
Costello told the Sheriff's Office that while using the bathroom, she had tipped her purse over and spilled the contents all over the floor. When she put her things back in her bag, she told investigators that she forgot to grab her revolver.
Several bills introducing tighter gun control in Maryland were defeated during the latest session of the General Assembly. A measure to reduce the number of bullets in a clip and one to institute a harsher penalty for carrying an unregistered firearm were both quashed in committee, the Washington Post reported.
