Maybe , just maybe, he didn’t know how to use the gun, because no one taught him how?
Ignorance is not an excuse. Negligent homicide sounds justifiable here.
That makes it sound soooo innocent. I know the area where this happened - it's in Jefferson Parish just west of the New Orleans boundary. Picture several blocks of run-down, dilapidated townhouse apartment buildings, probably loaded with Section-8 tenants. It was a bad area fifteen years ago, when I worked a few miles away. Katrina made it much worse (flooded with displaced public housing residents, not water).
There was a shooting that I recall from those years. A carload of young urban thugs was cruising along when one of the riders was criticized by the others for some incident wherein he failed to measure-up to some gang-banger requirement. They dared him to prove that he "had heart", so he tried to prove that by pointing his empty pistol at his temple, and pulling the trigger.
Yep, he racked the slide, *then* he dropped the magazine, then *bang* - brains all over the car.
So yes, this shooting was probably accidental and negligent... but the general population of the 500 block of Behrman in Gretna, LA probably knows quite a lot about guns. They're just not terribly cautious.