Girl shot in leg with 'toy' firearm

An eight-year-old Ottawa girl planning to use her Christmas money for new toys from Wal-Mart instead left the Orleans store with a pellet gun wound to her leg Tuesday night.

Ashley Thompson suffered the superficial wound after her mother's boyfriend found a loaded pellet gun lying on top of a Barbie doll in the store's children's section.

Unaware the gun was loaded, the man jokingly pointed it at the girl's face before she turned on her heels and took the pellet in the leg.

"I can't help but think what could have happened to her had she not turned around and ran," said the girl's mom Marie White.

White said her boyfriend has since been "sick to his stomach" with guilt and refuses to talk about the incident.

"I don't blame him for what happened at all," White said. "We've learned a lesson."

The 34-year-old mom said she was initially "chewed out" by a store employee who blamed her boyfriend for aiming the gun at a child.

But White responded by calling Wal-Mart's Toronto head office yesterday to complain about the presence of guns in the store.

"With such a big store, why would you have your guns ... next to the toy department?" she said last night. "Truthfully, I had no idea that Wal-Mart even sold this type of commodity."

The loaded pellet gun -- a recently-returned Christmas gift -- had been inadvertently placed back with the toys instead of in the store's gun section, White said.

A Wal-Mart employee said last night the entire incident is being regarded as an accident.