Just want to share this with everyone who has kids...There is NO SUCH THING AS BEING TO CAREFUL!
Last update: May 30, 2005 at 10:19 AM
Boy shot and killed during family outing
Pat Pheifer and Matt McKinney, Star Tribune
May 30, 2005
A 4-year-old boy was shot and killed Sunday afternoon after he slipped undetected behind a paper target that family members and friends were using for gun practice. Evan Davis Klassen was accidentally shot shortly before 1:45 p.m., authorities said.
The group had gathered for the long holiday weekend at a trailer on Lake Vermilion in northeastern Minnesota when the accident happened.
There had been light rain on and off all day, but the group decided to get in a little target practice in the yard.
They didn't see the boy standing behind one of the paper targets.
The target didn't completely obscure the child, but he was wearing camouflage pants, making him difficult to see against the foliage, said Sgt. James McKenzie of the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office.
A 40-year-old man who is a friend of the family was shooting a 45-caliber handgun at the target from about 30 feet away. The bullet hit the target and then struck the 4-year-old and killed him, McKenzie said.
The boy and his family are from Chisago City, Minn., about 40 miles north of the Twin Cities. Their names were not released Sunday night.
Thirteen people had gathered at the property in the Tower area for the long holiday weekend, authorities said. The owner, the boy's grandfather, had just a trailer with a screen tent there.
"They thought they had the kids under control," McKenzie said.
After the shooting, people snatched up the boy and rushed to a nearby lodge for help. An ambulance and rescue workers arrived, but there was nothing they could do, the sergeant said.
"I was here when the boy was here," said a woman who works at the Glenwood Lodge in Tower. She asked that her name not be used, but said she helped the father and the man who shot the boy as they tried to resuscitate him.
They had the boy outside, along the circular driveway at the front of the lodge on the lake shore.
The woman said the boy had been shot in the chest. She said the man who shot him was devastated.
"He wasn't drinking or anything like that," she said. The ambulance took the boy away and the man stayed at the lodge for several hours, taking a shower and standing alone on the docks.
"He just sat out there by himself," she said. The man eventually drove off in his pickup truck with his girlfriend, she said.
McKenzie said the incident was "a pretty straightforward accident." No charges are likely to be filed.
