Little girl finds teddy bear, gun inside donated Christmas gift

Just when you thought the sickos who stick needles in Halloween candy had the lockdown on demented holiday behaviour, a real contender for the Christmas title has emerged in Harlem, N.Y.

As the New York Post reports, eight-year-old Natasha Brunson opened a donated present on Christmas morning, only to find a handgun nestled underneath her new mama-and-baby teddy bear set.

Natasha’s foster mother, Sheeba Anderson, had picked up two bags of wrapped gifts from a city church and taken them home to her six foster children at the Frederick Douglass Houses.

Anderson told the paper that she was watching another child open a gift when Natasha pulled out the weapon initially thinking it was another toy.

“I heard her say, ‘Look, Miss Sheeba, I found a gun!’ She was waving it around and playing with it.”

Thankfully, the gun was inoperable. Anderson called the police, who soon established that the gun was unloaded, its serial number and firing pin removed.

But before she let her foster children touch another present, the 42-year-old examined every gift to make sure there were no other “surprises” hidden among the toy fur.

“Who knows what else was going on with this bear? It could have had drugs or needles or anything else in there,” she said.

[ More Daily Buzz: Boy bursts out crying in joy at present ]

Anderson says she’s outraged that the church didn’t do a better job of screening the packages that made it into her home.

Investigators are still trying to determine where the gun came from and how it happened to slip through the radar.

"We are concerned when any potential risk in a foster home comes to our attention, and are working to ensure that all of the children in the home remain safe," New York’s Administration for Children’s Services said in a released statement.

So if this is some individual’s idea of being “charitable” maybe he or she can skip the generosity next year and buy some basic humanity with the extra funds.