Instructor dies after being shot accidentally by a 9-year-old student

Instructor dies after being shot accidentally by a 9-year-old student
(Image credit: Facebook.com/BulletsandBurgersLV)

An instructor died Monday night after a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot him with an Uzi at a Kingman, Arizona, shooting range.

The shooting took place Monday morning at a tourist spot called Bullets and Burgers, 25 miles south of Las Vegas, a spokeswoman for the Mohave County Sheriff's Office said. The girl, vacationing with her parents from New Jersey, "safely and successfully" fired the Uzi in "single-shot" mode, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, but once the weapon was put into "fully-automatic," it "recoiled and drifted left."

The instructor, Charles Vacca, 39, "just dropped," Mohave County Sheriff Jim McCabe said. He was hit at least once in the head. It has yet to be determined how many rounds were fired by the girl, but a video does exist of the incident, which McCabe called "ghastly." A short, edited clip was released showing the girl firing the weapon safely moments before Vacca was hit.

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The Review-Journal reports that no citations will be issued or charges filed, as the shooting range is licensed and a legal operation.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.