An armed man who believed he was confronting an intruder in the basement of his home Tuesday morning instead fatally shot his 14-year-old son, who was supposed to be on his way to school, police said.
Police said the teen had headed to the bus stop but apparently came back home through a back door. The man said he heard a noise in the basement. Police said when the father opened a door within the basement, the boy appeared.
"He scared me!" the distraught father said in his 911 call shortly before 6:30 a.m. "I thought he was in school. I heard noise, so I went downstairs looking and he jumped out at me. .... Oh, God. Get here quick!"
The man told police he accidentally shot his son with a .45-caliber handgun. After initially telling the 911 dispatcher the boy was hit in the chest, he then said it was in the neck. The dispatcher told him to put the gun on the kitchen counter, then talked him through first aid steps and tried to calm him until police and emergency vehicles arrived.
The boy died at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Police identified him as Georta Mack.
You know the really sad part of this is that I have to pick and choose which gun fatality stories to share, out of a never ending stream of them that show up in my e-mails and in the comments.
There are so many, and come at such a quick pace, that at times it literally seems overwhelming.
When are people going to finally understand that the weapon they have purchased to keep themselves safe is the very thing that now puts them is constant danger?
That is horrible. So sad.
ReplyDeleteI hope they donated his organs so some good can come of this tragedy.
It can not be easy for you to sift through so many horror stories of accidental gun shootings, but please know you make a difference Gryphen. It will never be said you did not do your part.
ReplyDeleteI agree - thank you Gryphen. Thanks for all you do. This blog is my online home. I come here first. Then on to the a Washington Post and NYT. I wish that they would catch up to you on guns and the harm that religions can do to people's humanity and dignity, even as they decline in the West.
DeleteI came for the Palin scandals but stayed for the other news and opinion.
---------<------<-----------X@
A long stem Internet rose for you, my friend.
-Sarah from DC
I agree also too. Thank you Gryphen.
DeleteWhat disturbs me is that I don't see these stories like I should on most mainstream sites, yet they have click-bait articles and there is a story EVERY.SINGLE.DAY about the kartrashians.
These tragic stories need to be seen by the gun nuts who have had the fear of their rights being taken away instilled in them by the right wing fear mongerers, so they can see exactly how often this is happening.
Also, what I would love to see by an investigate journalist, is if these same people who shot a child or loved one they thought was an intruder or by accident, if a year or two later they still feel the same way about their guns.
R in NC
Shame on those who have experienced such tragedies and do not make it their life's mission to make change in this regard.
ReplyDeleteIf you have young children who go on play dates at others' houses, please bring up and inquire if they have guns in their house.
My adult children began asking people if they had any guns before play dates.
Delete***and
ReplyDeleteIt's really funny how "Maloe" is playing you people like a fiddle.
It's really NOT funny that you can't keep your ass from showing even on a post about a dead child which has nothing to do with me or my family. If you choose not to believe me I do not care but have a little decency and at least pretend you aren't a psycho loser who can't even go one post without doing damage control.
DeletePlaying us like a fiddle? I guarantee not one person here has changed his or her life based on what the cousin has written (except maybe a Palin or two who might be reading). Some people believe or want to believe. Some people don't. It's no big deal.
DeleteIn full agreement, 6:04 AM, but it sure has some people's panties in a wad now doesn't it?
DeleteWe don't know if cousin is real. She did tell us about the mouth sore, the pink and white outfit, and the thanksgiving presence of Sailor before it came out anywhere else, so I tend to believe her. I think she may be Molly's teenage daughter. We shall see.
DeleteNo one is being played like a fiddle. You trolls need to get some perspective. Palins are pure entertainment at this point. Sarah has squandered whatever political power and opportunity she may have once had. Bristol is a joke. Literally. Abstinence spokespe.... Hahahahaha
Jesus. Try to stay on topic. Or don't you have anything intelligent to contribute to to this post?
Delete@4:20 I kinda think "cousin" is genuine and you're doing your best to discredit her. Her posting must be like a thorn up your ads....lol.
DeleteTo the "cousin" whoever is thrashing you is making you more legit in my opinion. Keep posting
and thanks for doing so.
"When are people going to finally understand that the weapon they have purchased to keep themselves safe is the very thing that now puts them is constant danger?"
ReplyDeleteOnly when they kill a loved one, or get shot by their own gun. People don't learn by example. Just like we don't think we are going to die...and young people especially think they are immortal when driving drunk.
Never underestimate the rigidity of humans to change or learn. That's why it's useless to debate with 99% of people. Their minds were made up as children.
They will never understand. And until we insist that these people are brought up on murder charges every damn time, it's all just a sad accident. If a woman who miscarries can be called a murderer what the heck are all these NRA stooges who are killing real people every day? They whine about '50 million fetuses' (at least 20% of whom were never viable enough to be born anyway, and another who knows how many who might have caused the woman's death, and another subset that would have cost the government millions to keep alive) but they care not a whit about the real live kids and adults shot daily in their own homes with the parent's guns? Book 'em, every one of them..grandpa, grandma, mother father..if their gun was used to shoot and kill someone, they have committed murder.
ReplyDeleteI agree. In addition gun owners should have to carry insurance with high rates and they should be required, if parents, to inform the parents of their children's friends that there are guns on the premises.
DeleteBeaglemom
@SallyinMI 4:49 AM
DeleteThey whine about '50 million fetuses' (at least 20% of whom were never viable enough to be born anyway,
***********************
Most aborted fetuses are not viable. Very few women get late term abortions. The norm is a woman gets an abortion when it is an embryo, or a fetus of under five months of gestation. Which means the fetus is not viable. A fetus is not viable until at least MAYBE 6 1/2 months or older. Women don't wait that long to get an abortion.
Do gun owners have a personal issue of dysfunctional macho pride that prevents them from calling the police? This father had a gun but reacted unable to recognize his own son murdering him.
ReplyDeleteUntil now I have been naive that there are a lot of people, gun owners, who believe any perceived or real threat deserves and justifies murder. Now I can make sense of the tremendous support George Zimmerman received for ignoring the police pursuing and killing Trayvon Martin. Apprehending or disabling a suspected criminal is too much a shade of grey for those people.
I was taught, in my fundie so-called Christian school, that we should not call the police if we see a crime in progress, because that is both cowardly and asking for government intervention. One of my teachers gave an example of how he was standing in the office and observed a home next door being burglarized. He called the police, which in my adult estimation is what he should have done, but he told us that he had made a mistake. He should have gone outside and confronted the burglar himself and made a citizen's arrest. Never mind that the burglar could have been armed and/or violent and that police, not 40-year-old history teachers, are trained to assess and handle dangerous situations.
DeleteThat's how these people think. They believe they are just as qualified as the police to confront criminals, put themselves at risk, and make life or death decisions. They don't understand the EXTENSIVE training law enforcement personnel undergo to determine when to draw their weapons and when and how to try to de-escalate situations. We've all seen how often cops get power-hungry and trigger-happy with tragic results, but as the relative of a cop, I know there are far more stories of times when police officers have successfully defused tense situations, talked a potentially violent suspect out of shooting, and/or convinced a confused teenager not to keep waving a toy gun that people think is real. These stories don't make the news, but they happen every day. They can't happen, though, when macho assholes like this guy take the law into their own hands.
NRA headline for this story:
ReplyDelete"Well armed homeowner successfully stops intruder"
Just a note from a parent of a 15 yr old. Can we please stop referring to typical teenage behavior as bad and teenagers as partiers just because they do what we all did? Grouping average teens in with hardcore partiers who have issues handling adult life only diminishes real problems. This isn't meant to be palin related but they too are victims of being brought into the problematic group.
ReplyDeleteI think deep down everyone can agree here.
Has someone here been doing that?
DeleteConcern troll.
DeleteStop making stuff up. We all know what the Palins are about.
Your comment has nothing to do with this post or any of the comments on it.
Delete5:10am
DeleteSounds like your kid is a loser druggie and partier and you're just trying to make excuses for raising a loser. Carry on.
Long, long ago when I was teenage babysitter, the parents of three very small children whom I babysat told me that they kept a loaded gun in a chest of drawers in their bedroom. They thought that this fact would reassure me because their house was fairly isolated. I had never heard of anyone owning a gun at that point in my life. Needless to say, I was much more nervous at their house knowing that a gun was upstairs than I had ever been before.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Just checking in to see if anybody asked why GinaM is so cozy with Sarah Palin.
ReplyDeleteHow old is GinaM?
Has she reached puberty yet?
Mentally speaking, she is a hopeless child.
DeleteOr maybe she has a sense of humor that you don't enjoy or appreciate.
DeleteYou know you don't have to read EVERY comment, right? GinaM makes it easy by putting her name at the top of everything she writes.
Anon 6:11
DeleteI read EVERY comment looking for a thread of intelligence from the IM loyalists.
Are you the hall monitor trying to keep order in the comment section?
If you think of commenters here as IM "loyalists" and you spend your time looking for threads of intelligence here...
DeleteYou are stupid.
There is plenty of intelligence, silliness, and even stupidity here, but reading comments sections for anything more than entertainment is cray cray. I guess it could also work out ok for you if you are a paid troll or a narcissist looking for attention. Those are your options, troll. Insane, paid, or a Palin.
No, I'm not a hall monitor, 6:11. If you want to spend your free time analyzing comments on Immoral Minority, that's your business.
DeleteAnonymous 5:36 AM wrote: Just checking in to see if anybody asked why GinaM is so cozy with Sarah Palin.
DeleteThe article "RAM gets a job", posted yesterday at 8:30 AM Alaska time, included a picture of Rebecca Mansour and Sarah Palin, arguably "getting cozy."
GinaM chooses to use a picture of Rebecca Mansour as her avatar (picture displayed next to her comments).
Anonymous 5:36 AM concludes that GinaM is "so cozy with Sarah Palin."
Non sequitur.
The irony owning a gun for "safety" is lost on them.
ReplyDeleteSo many family members are dying like this.
ReplyDeleteWhy would you shoot your gun without first identifying the target?!
How sad that the father's first assumption at maybe 7 in the morning was that there was an "intruder" in his home. How sad that a child has to be afraid of being shot in his own home by his own parent if the child isn't exactly where he should be.
ReplyDeleteThis is the fault of the NRA, its masters and its desperate defenders. A gun in the hand of every American leads only to tragedy. But they don't care. They got $$$.
ReplyDeleteOT-READ THIS>
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/14/varsity-basketball-players-raped-teammate-and-school-let-team-keep-playing.html
My sister's new husband (in Arizona) keeps a lot of guns in the house for "protection". I asked her one day why they don't have a security system too. She just kind of blank stared me like I was speaking in french. Seems like a pretty reasonable question to me.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile in Chicago of all places, two different clerks with concealed permits defended themselves and others.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-robbers-shot-cell-phone-store-20160113-story.html
Why "of all places?"
ReplyDeleteMay I ask a silly question? If this was an "accident", then why isn't there insurance for these trigger happy yahoos too lazy to identify their target?
ReplyDeleteUntil a gun death hits home, no one has a clue what it's like. My turn came today, my nephew shot himself through the heart with a Magnum his father kept "for protection", my nephew had a history with chronic depression, heartbroken scratches the surface for me, but I can't imagine what the parents go through. My sister found him and is in the hospital heavily sedated, but she always argued "It's just ONE gun and I trust my husband's judgement" And for the record, they went for family counseling about dealing with depression and guns. I guess theres ammosexuals in all walks of life.
I do know one thing, more guns are not the answer.