A Colorado Springs mother whose 4-year-old son accidentally shot himself outside a Manitou Springs marijuana store while she was looking after him has pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide, according to court records.

During an arraignment hearing last Thursday, Ashlynne Perez, 26, pleaded guilty in the July death. A plea agreement with prosecutors, according to court records, was filed in her case the same day.

Perez was arrested with the child’s father, Carlos Perez, on July 6, the day the Manitou Springs Police Department was called to Maggie’s Farm, 141 Manitou Ave., on a report of a shot being fired and a 4-year-old who appeared to be shot in the front seat of a vehicle.

When they arrived, police found the child dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

The child, according to an arrest affidavit filed in Perez’s case, unbuckled himself from his booster seat while waiting for his father in an SUV with his mother and younger sibling.

Perez told police she told the child to rebuckle, but that he refused and climbed to the front seat. As her head was turned, she said, she heard a “loud boom” and turned back to find the child had apparently shot himself.

Mother accused in accidental shooting death of 4-year-old, charges dropped for father

In the front seat, the 4-year-old had found a loaded gun in the vehicle’s open glove compartment and ultimately shot himself with it, the affidavit stated.

Ashlynne and Carlos Perez, authorities said in the affidavit, should have known the child was curious about the gun, as he had been caught playing with firearms before, and that he was capable of unbuckling himself from his booster seat.

“Neither placed the firearm in a safe location despite knowing the past history of (the child) and firearms resulting in this incident occurring,” they wrote in the affidavit.

Charges were ultimately dropped for Carlos Perez, who was inside the store at the time of the incident, but not for Ashlynne Perez, who was indicted by a grand jury in the case, according to court records.

Ashlynne Perez was scheduled by Fourth Judicial District Judge Robin Chittum to be sentenced March 24.