Parents of boy, 13, who shot dead his 9-year-old cousin when they were left home alone are indicted on negligent homicide charges

 The parents of a 13-year-old boy who fatally shot his younger cousin while playing with his father's loaded gun have been charged in the nine-year-old's death in suburban Memphis.

Latria Johnson, 28, and her boyfriend Lindsey Williams, 27, have been indicted on criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment charges, the Shelby County district attorney's office said in a news release.

Investigators said the two boys were left alone at the Canterbury Woods Apartments on Gallan Drive in the Memphis suburb of Cordova just after 5.30pm on March 13, while their mothers went shopping.

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Latria Johnson, 28 (left), and her boyfriend Lindsey Williams, 27 (right), from Tennessee, have been charged with criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in a child's death

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Prosecutors say the couple's 13-year-old son accidentally shot and killed his nine-year-old cousin, Xavier Jackson (pictured), with his father's loaded gun

The older boy, who was not named, picked up his father's loaded .40 caliber handgun in the master bedroom and accidentally pulled the trigger, according to investigators. 

Xavier Jackson was killed when a bullet struck him in the face, authorities said. He would have turned 10 in April. 

The gun had been left unsecured where the children had access to it, authorities said, according to WMC Action News 5. 

Williams told police he routinely kept the loaded gun near a window sill and his son knew where he stored it, according to a police affidavit.

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Williams also was charged with resisting official detention after he tried to push his way past police and into the house.

The couple are out of jail on their own recognizance. Their lawyer, John Keith Perry, said the boys' mothers left the children alone in the apartment for less than an hour as they went to go buy lunch.

'It's a horrible accident that can happen even with the best intended people,' Perry said in a phone interview.