An eight-year-old boy died in St. David, Arizona, this week after being accidentally hit in his chest by a .22 caliber pellet fired from an air rifle.
The incident occurred at around 5 p.m. local time Monday, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on Facebook.
After emergency care was performed at the scene, Bradley John Shockley was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was pronounced dead there at around 6 p.m., the sheriff’s office said.
The area where the boy was shot is rural, and a person was nearby doing target practice with the air rifle when a pellet went wide and struck him, sheriff’s office spokesperson Carol Capas told the Arizona Republic.
The shooting was an accident, according to Bradley’s family. He and a friend were riding on an all-terrain vehicle near a place they had been warned against approaching.
“It was a complete accident, and he tragically got shot,” his mother, Ella Scofield, told KOLD-TV.
The sheriff’s office neither named the shooter nor said what, if any, criminal charges are expected.
“We don’t believe this was an intentional act by any stretch of the imagination. Not saying this is the case at all here, but (detectives are asking) ‘was there any type of inebriation here?’ ‘Is there any indication that the person shooting knew or should have reasonably known that this (ATV) would have run in front of him and he shouldn’t have been shooting in that direction?’” Ms. Capas explained to NBC News.
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