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Shooting victim in serious condition
The high school student who was shot Wednesday by a five-year-old child playing with a loaded gun, remained in serious condition Thursday at the St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center's intensive care unit.
The 16-year-old victim was shot at about 11:18 a.m. at the corner of N. 10th East and East Jackson streets, around the corner and about half a block from the Hacker Middle School grounds.
Police Chief John Walter said the quick response of police and ambulance crews may have saved the young man' life. One patrol car was less than a block away when the incident occurred. Ambulances arrived only a few minutes later "and if he hadn't been lifeflighted, he might not have made it," Walter said. "He lost a lot of blood.
"Any 'through-and-through' is going to affect him for a long time," Walter added, but the reports he had received was that the teen had successfully come out of surgery for his wounds and was expected to survive. The teen was shot by a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, which hit him in the left side of his back and exited out the front of his body.
The teen was on lunch break from the high school, walking with some of his friends to Maverik, when he was shot at the corner of N. 10th East St. and East Jackson Street, around the corner and about half a block from the Hacker Middle School grounds.
The shot was fired by a five-year-old child who had found a loaded gun in his home and taken it outside to play with in his backyard. His mother was at home at the time, but was cleaning and didn't realize what had happened until she heard the shot, and went running outside, police officials said.
Walter said he believed the child "knows that something really bad happened, and that he was to blame, but I don't think he really understands what happened."
Authorities are still trying to piece together how he got the weapon. Currently, they believe it belonged to the boyfriend of the child's mother, but the investigation is continuing. Police have recommended that charges of child endangerment be filed, because the victim is a minor and because of the five-year-old's access to the gun, but the final decision as to whether or not there is sufficient merit to proceed with the filing of formal charges will be up to the county prosecuting attorney.
Police are still trying to determine how many shots were fired by the child. Initially, the believed just one had been fired, but some witnesses reported hearing two shots. The shot was fired from 50-75 yards away and across the street from where the victim was hit.
Police said the shooting by the child was clearly accidental. "This was just a very unfortunate situation," said Sgt. Rick Viola of the Mountain Home Police Department.
Viola added that the incident underscores the need for families to secure firearms properly. "If they're laying around, kids can find them. If you have little ones, you have to be smart about it," he said.
Some of the students who were with the victim were so shaken up by the incident that they did not return to school and the school district immediately activated its crisis intervention/grief teams to help students at the high school. The district brings in extra counseling staff trained in dealing with traumas during necessary circumstances. The staff are available to any student needing someone to talk to about their feelings concerning the incident. The grief teams were expected to be there at least through Friday.
Although there was never a threat to any schools, school district administrators said they were flooded with phone calls of concern. "You name it as far as the variety of calls we got," said Deputy Supt. James Gilbert. "It's amazing how things get twisted and turned as the rumors float around town."
As a result, the district rushed out a letter to go home with all students Wednesday afternoon, describing what had happened to the best of their information at the time at the time the letter was written, and attempting to quell some of the rumors it had received, including pointing out the incident was not gang related.
Because most of the principals involved in the incident are juveniles, authorities have not released any names of the victim, the child or the child's parents.