TAMPA — One day last week, 4-year-old Yanelly Zoller reached into her grandmother's purse looking for candy, her father says. 
 
 Instead, she found a gun. She accidently pulled the trigger and was shot in the chest. 
 
 Shane Zoller, 22, is the father of three children: one living, another on the way and the little girl he will bury today. 
 
 "She just wanted some damn candy," Zoller said Wednesday. 
 
 Tampa police are still investigating, but said they have no reason to doubt the story. 
 
 The incident happened Sept. 14 at the North Tampa home of Michael and Christie Zoller, who are Yanelly's grandparents. 
 
 "I was driving to pick her up with her bathing suit in my car to take her to the splash pads," Shane Zoller said. "When I pulled up, that's when I saw all the police lights." 
 
 Yanelly, who went by Nelly, was a perfect mixture of her mother and father, he said. The two shared custody. 
 
 "She loved to help daddy work on the car," he said. "She would hand me tools. But she also really liked doing her makeup." 
 
 According to the obituary her family wrote, she also loved playing with her puppy, watching the cartoon Shimmer and Shine and jumping on the couch. 
 
 Shane Zoller said he was still in high school when he became a father. If his parents had not helped him with Nelly, he said, he would have had to drop out of school. 
 
 "She was extremely close to them and would get so excited when she got to stay at her nana's house," he said. "She was attached to her nana's hip." 
 
 The family is rasing money for Nelly's funeral costs on crowdfunding websites GoFundMe.com and YouCaring.com. 
 
 Contact Jonathan Capriel at [email protected] 
 
 SPECIAL REPORT: In Florida, one child is shot every 17 hours 
 
 Connect with us ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| When the 4-year-old slipped her hand into her grandmother’s purse, she was searching for something sweet, her father told the Tampa Bay Times. 
 
 Shane Zoller told the newspaper that his daughter, Yanelly, was looking for candy while visiting her grandparents last week in North Tampa, Fla. Instead, she found a handgun, then accidentally shot and killed herself, Zoller said. 
 
 “I was driving to pick her up with her bathing suit in my car to take her to the splash pads,” Zoller told the Times. “When I pulled up, that’s when I saw all the police lights.” 
 
 Authorities confirmed that the child, called “Nelly,” found a firearm at the home in Tampa on Sept. 14 and shot herself. 
 
 Her grandparents, Michael and Christie Zoller, were both home at the time, authorities said. A Tampa police spokesman told The Washington Post on Thursday that it appears the shooting was accidental, but authorities are still investigating. 
 
 “She just wanted some damn candy,” Shane Zoller told the Times on Wednesday, the day before his daughter’s funeral. 
 
 The Hillsborough County medical examiner’s office said Yanelly died of a gunshot wound to the chest, which perforated her lungs, aorta and esophagus. The manner of death was listed as an accident. 
 
 [Almost two dozen kids are shot every day in the U.S. This 4-year-old was one of them.] 
 
 As The Post’s John Woodrow Cox reported last week, an average of 23 children were shot each day in 2015, according to a review of the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. That’s at least one bullet every 63 minutes. 
 
 That year, an estimated 8,400 children were struck, and 1,458 of them died — more than in any year since at least 2010. That death toll amounted to more than the entire number of U.S. military fatalities in Afghanistan over the past 10 years. 
 
 According to Florida law, “a person who stores or leaves, on a premise under his or her control, a loaded firearm … and who knows or reasonably should know that a minor is likely to gain access to the firearm without the lawful permission of the minor’s parent or the person having charge of the minor, or without the supervision required by law, shall keep the firearm in a securely locked box or container or in a location which a reasonable person would believe to be secure or shall secure it with a trigger lock.” 
 
 One exception, the law states: “When the person is carrying the firearm on his or her body or within such close proximity thereto that he or she can retrieve and use it as easily and quickly as if he or she carried it on his or her body.” 
 
 Failing to secure a firearm “in the required manner” is a misdemeanor, if a minor gains access to it without permission. 
 
 AGAIN. Four-year-old girl shoots, kills self while grabbing for candy in grandmother's purse https://t.co/pOK2f4UeyX pic.twitter.com/TMJ50A5IMo — Moms Demand Action (@MomsDemand) September 21, 2017 
 
 Yanelly’s obituary said she enjoyed watching the cartoon “Shimmer and Shine” and bouncing on the couch, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She also loved spending time with her grandparents, her father said. 
 
 “She was extremely close to them and would get so excited when she got to stay at her nana’s house,” Zoller told the Times. “She was attached to her nana’s hip.” 
 
 A Facebook page matching the grandmother’s name was filled with photos of the child, whom she called her “pop tart.” A day after the shooting death, Christie Zoller wrote: “God please answer me why did you take her.” Then: “Good night sweet Angel nana loves you more than words could ever say.” 
 
 By Thursday afternoon, the same day Nelly Zoller was to be buried at Sunset Memory Gardens in Thonotosassa, Fla., a GoFundMe page had raised more than $1,700 for her funeral costs, and a YouCaring campaign had raised about $400. 
 
 “So many broken hearts who are waiting to be told this is all one big nightmare,” read a message on the YouCaring page. “The shock and disbelief is real. The death of a child turns the world upside down and leaves unanswered questions of why? The only answer that half way makes sense is Heaven needed another angel. Her star shines bright. Our beautiful angel was taken by a freak accident, one that is difficult to discuss.” 
 
 The message end with: “Please love your children … please let them know you love them and never go to bed without giving them their little kisses and there hugs because you never know when it’ll be the last time you’ll say good night.” 
 
 Read more: 
 
 ‘Did your father die?’ For a second-grader, gunfire, school lockdowns, then the worst violence of all 
 
 Father ‘recklessly’ waving gun fatally shot his 4-year-old in the head, police say 
 
 An officer’s 2-year-old son died after he shot himself with his father’s gun, police say 
 
 ‘I just hope she didn’t suffer’: Constable accidentally kills 12-year-old girl during eviction ||||| TAMPA, FL - Nelly Marie Christine Zoller was digging into her grandmother's purse last week, looking for candy. The 4-year-old found a gun. Her funeral will be held Thursday at Sunset Funeral Home in Thonotosassa. 
 
 
 
 Nelly's obit could be the description of any 4-year-old girl: "Nelly loved playing with her puppy, watching Shimmer & Shine, playing at the Splash Pad in Tampa, jumping on the couch and doing her make up." 
 
 Tampa police gave this report of the incident: "On Sept. 14, sometime before 2:22 p.m., Yanelly Zoller, 4 year old female (1/12/2013), reportedly found a firearm in her grandmother's purse and accidentally shot herself. The grandmother, Christie Zoller, and grandfather, Michael Zoller, were at home with the child at the time." 
 
 
 
 
 
 Her given name was Yanelly, but everyone called her Nelly. "Left to cherish her memory are her parents, Shane and Lisette; brothers, Liam Zoller and Noah Banksdon; paternal grandparents, Michael and Christie Zoller; and maternal grandmother, Cindy Villareal," the obit says. 
 
 
 
 
 
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 There will be a visitation on Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Sunset Funeral Home, 11005 N. U.S. Highway 301, Thonotosassa. Funeral services will begin at 1 p.m. followed by interment in Sunset Memory Gardens. 
 
 
 
 Her father told the Tampa Bay Times that she was searching for candy in her grandmother's purse. She was shot in the chest. 
 
 "I was driving to pick her up with her bathing suit in my car to take her to the splash pads," Shane Zoller told the Times. "When I pulled up, that's when I saw all the police lights." 
 
 The family is raising money for Nelly's funeral costs on GoFundMe.com and You Caring.com. The GoFundMe account had raised $1,485 on Thursday morning. The goal is $5,000. 
 
 Read the full story here in the Times. 
 
 Photo via GoFundMe.com
– Yanelly "Nelly" Zoller was trying to find candy in her grandma's purse when she stumbled upon a gun, accidentally pulled the trigger, and fatally shot herself in the chest. The Florida 4-year-old was at her grandparents' home Sept. 14 when the tragedy occurred; her father, Shane, arrived to pick her up and take her to a nearby splash pad when he saw police cars at the house. "She just wanted some damn candy," he tells the Tampa Bay Times. Her grandparents were at home at the time, Patch reports. "She was extremely close to them and would get so excited when she got to stay at her nana's house," he adds. "She was attached to her nana's hip." A Tampa police spokesperson tells the Washington Post it appears the shooting was accidental, but an investigation is still underway. Funds are being raised for funeral costs on YouCaring and GoFundMe.