photo by: Sara Shepherd

Lawrence police investigate a shooting in the 600 block of North Michigan Street, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017.

Two temporarily unattended toddlers apparently found and were playing with a gun when the gun fired and one of them was killed, according to a newly released affidavit in the case.

Autumn Grace Smith, 1, was fatally shot about 10:30 a.m. Sept. 22, 2017, at the her family’s home in the 600 block of North Michigan Street in Lawrence.

Following completion of the police investigation and a review by the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office, criminal charges were filed against Autumn’s father, Chance M. Smith, 32, who was arrested June 15.

Smith is charged with involuntary manslaughter, for allegedly recklessly causing Autumn’s death, and two counts of aggravated endangerment of a child, for allegedly allowing two children — Autumn and an unnamed 2-year-old — to be placed in a situation where their life, body or health was endangered, according to the complaint filed in Douglas County District Court.

This week, in response to a request from the Journal-World, the court released the affidavit prepared by police in support of Smith’s arrest on those charges.

According to the affidavit:

Police arrived at the house that morning and found Smith “crying and obviously distraught” on the front step.

Smith directed police upstairs, where an officer found Autumn lying on her parents’ bed with an apparent gunshot wound. The officer tried CPR but never found a pulse, and Autumn was pronounced dead by medics arriving a few minutes later.

Next to Autumn’s body on the bed was a handgun, a loaded magazine and a spent shell casing.

A 2-year-old boy, who is not Autumn’s sibling, was also in the house, unhurt.

Smith told police that he’d left the toddlers in the living room watching nursery rhyme songs on TV while he went to the back porch to let his dogs out and smoke a cigarette. He said he was gone for 5 or 10 minutes.

When he came back in, Smith said he found the little boy crying in the living room but Autumn wasn’t there. He called for Autumn and went upstairs to check her bedroom, but she wasn’t there either.

He checked his bedroom and found Autumn there, lying face down on the floor next to the bed.

Smith said he picked Autumn up, put her on the bed and saw wounds on her neck. He said he called 911 immediately, then grabbed the gun and emptied it.

Smith told police that when he was in the house he usually kept the gun, a “small frame” Glock 9mm handgun, in the closet but that the night before he had placed it, loaded, under the mattress of his adjustable bed. When police asked why he put it there, he said, “Just switching up the routine I guess, I don’t know, no particular reason.”

Police found the head of the mattress — under which Smith said he’d put the gun — raised and a bloodstain on the carpet next to the bed. They found the remote control for the mattress on the floor next to the bed. They found the gun’s holster in the corner of the room.

Police said that when they arrived, Autumn’s body was on the bed.

“She was wearing a Carter’s brand pink and white polka dot shirt containing bloodstains and a defect on the left chest area of the shirt, white patterned pants, and a diaper,” the affidavit said.

An autopsy showed she’d sustained a single gunshot, which entered her chest, traveled upward, exited her neck and then re-entered her chin. The coroner did not find gun soot on Autumn’s body.

The 2-year-old who was with Autumn talked some but didn’t speak in response to most of the officer’s questions. Samples taken from him tested positive for gunshot residue, indicating he’d been near a firearm being discharged or touched one that had been discharged.

When asked whether there were other guns in the house, Smith said, “yeah, oh yeah,” and told them he kept a shotgun in his closet and another handgun in his medicine cabinet, both unloaded. He said he had a number of other guns, both handguns and long guns, locked in a safe in the basement.

Autumn’s family held her funeral on Sept. 28, 2017, which would have been her second birthday.

After sustaining a traumatic brain injury from an on-the-job accident in late 2016, Smith went from working long hours to being a stay-at-home dad to his two children, Autumn and her older brother, while his wife went to work, according to a profile of the family in the Journal-World a few months before the shooting.

Smith is free on $10,000 bond, according to court records. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 9.

Smith’s attorney, Adam Hall, declined to comment Thursday on allegations in the affidavit.