Meosha Mayfield has seen many news stories about children finding a gun and ending up dead in an accidental shooting.

The Birmingham mother would watch with horror and sadness, and say to herself, “That could never be me.”

And then it was her.

Five days ago, 3-year-old Kacey Jackson found his mother’s gun that she thought she had secured under her bed. Within seconds, Kacey was dead inside their east Birmingham home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“This past week has been the hardest week of my life,’’ Mayfield said. “I’ve been getting so many death threats, and everybody wants to blame me, but that was my child, I carried him, and I know I could have been more careful, but don’t you think if I could have stopped it or saved him, I would have?”

Police and firefighters were dispatched at about 11:42 a.m. Thursday to Mayfield’s home on Second Avenue North. They found the child had been shot, and Kacey was pronounced dead on the scene.

Mayfield made the call to 911, and reported the toddler was suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“I see that scene every day – when I came out and saw him,’’ Mayfield said. “It was just two seconds.”

Kacey would have turned 4 years old today.

Instead of the party they had planned for him, family and friends gathered to sing “Happy Birthday” to Kacey and release blue balloons in his memory.

Mayfield said Kacey was curious, caring, funny, unique, a daredevil.

“He was a 30-year-old in a 3-year-old’s body,’’ she said through her tears. “He was so smart.”

“He’d come in here asking, ‘Mama, can you draw me a hexagon, a pentagon, a trapezoid?’’’ Mayfield said. “And I’m like, ‘Baby, I haven’t been in school for a while.’’’

“He was just so loving,’’ she said. “I’d be asleep, and he’d come in there and start kissing me.”

Kacey was the youngest of Mayfield’s four children.

“When it came to his brothers and sisters, he did not play about them,’’ she said. “He loved them.”

“His personality was so advanced,’’ Mayfield said. “You will never meet another 3-year-old like him.”

Mayfield said leading up to the holiday, Kacey kept telling her, “Mama, you need to get in the Christmas spirit.”

“I wasn’t feeling it,’’ she said, “and I never knew why.”

Someone had recently tried to break into the family’s home. Mayfield felt she needed the gun for protection but thought she had it secured from the children.

“I didn’t know my baby was going to crawl under the bed,’’ she said.

Another Birmingham boy, age 12, died Christmas Eve in an accidental shooting in a west Birmingham alley. Police said the boy retrieved a gun from a vehicle while visiting family friends on Pike Road.

“I’m always open to criticism and everybody’s entitled to their opinion,’’ she said.

“I know the world is going to blame me, but I just want everyone to know you can never be too careful when it comes to these kids and guns,’’ Mayfield said. “ It doesn’t matter how safe you think you are.”

“I don’t ever want another gun in my house,’’ she said. “Accidents happen and it will cost them their life.”

Mayfield said Kacey brought her energy and life.

“I can’t question God and I know my baby in a better place,’’ she said. “But I just got three years with him. I miss him.”