Instructor dies after being shot accidentally by a 9-year-old student
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 is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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