An accidental shooting in Georgia on New Year’s Eve left two teenagers dead, police officers said.
Investigators said that a group of teenage boys, between the ages of 15 and 19, were playing with a gun in a wooden house or shed in Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County around 3:15 p.m.
One teenage boy accidentally shot another, investigators said. The others fled the scene. The boy who shot his friend then committed suicide.
Detectives later identified the boy who accidentally fired the gun before killing himself as Devin Hodges, 15, and the teen that had been shot by Devin as Chad Carless, 17, the Gwinnett County Police Department said in a statement on Jan. 1.
In the statement, the police said it appeared that Hodges left the shed before killing himself.
“Detectives have learned the identities of the two males as well as more details into how the incidents unfolded. After multiple interviews from witnesses, detectives learned one of the males, Hodges, was showing the group a hand gun when he accidentally fired a shot,” the police said in the statement.
“The shot struck his friend, Carless, sitting next to him in the cramped shed. Carless succumbed to his injuries before help could arrive. As officers were arriving on scene, Hodges was seen running between two homes where he then took his own life with the handgun,” the statement continued.
Police officials haven’t said who owns the gun or how the teens obtained it. It was described as a handgun.
Neighbors said that the shooting was devastating.
“You know, it’s New Year’s Eve and to have this happen so close to home, it’s just really devastating. And now, we’re just in a state of panic to know who these two children are,” one neighbor told WSB-TV on Dec. 31, 2018, after the shooting.
“Are they children of our community where we can reach out to their families? So this was just really unexpected. Nothing like this ever (happened) in this neighborhood,” one neighbor said, not identifying herself.
Another neighbor said that none of the teens had any connection to the neighborhood.
Andrew Tran, another area resident, said he used to play in the same shed where the shooting happened. “I was shocked because just thinking about it, it could have been my friends,” he said.
Accidental Shooting Deaths Drop
Accidental shooting deaths are often shocking but far fewer Americans fall victim to firearm accidents than some two decades ago, even though people own more guns, according to new data.
Accidental firearm discharges killed 486 people in 2017, down more than 50 percent since 1997, according to mortality data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, gun sales increased more than 80 percent between 1999 and 2017, according to The DataFace, a San Francisco data analysis company that based its estimates on FBI background check data.
Factors behind the decrease in accidental shooting deaths, reported The Epoch Times, include safer hunting that led to fewer hunting accidents, a big push for safer storage of guns, and overall gun safety education efforts.
