Odinkar
US Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2007
- Messages
- 200
- Reaction score
- 88
This as I’m sure you can imagine is difficult to write, but I put this out so that other people can learn from this. I understand that there were mistakes made all the way around and I know I’ll get flamed, but there is nothing anyone can say that will make me feel worse then I do already. On Tuesday around 8 am I took my daughter to the dentist to get a filling replaced. It was in another town about 20 miles away from the town I live in. I left my 15 year old son asleep. About 11:15am I was driving home and finally heard my phone vibrate. It was my work (I work for a police department). One of the record clerks asks me if I had been monitoring any emergency traffic. I told her no. She then said the words that scared the **** out of me. She said I needed to call the sheriff of the county I live in as my son had shot himself. She then said he was OK and gave me the number. In a nutshell he had got into my gun cabinet in my bedroom and shot himself in the leg. It is one of those cheap type things you get at Wal-Mart that have the glass doors. My ex Father-in-law had put a key lock in it as the one that was there didn’t work (we got it at a garage sale). My son had found the spare keys that were “hidden” on the shelf of my closet. He was looking at my Walther PPK .380. He had been shooting with me a lot in the past and knew how to clear the chamber. With the PPK if you don’t rack the slide hard the round can fall back into the chamber, which is what happened. He went to clear it again and touched off the trigger. The bullet went in his right thigh on the inside of the leg, exited the back of the leg, and reentered the back of his right calf and stopped on the inside of his right calf about 4” above the ankle. He is only about 5’3” and 105lb. The bullet missed the artery, all the bones in his leg and the knee. He then walked around my bed to get the phone, then walked into the kitchen to get my cell number, but couldn’t find it. He then called 911 and told them what happened. He then walked to the front door to unlock it for the EMT’s, and decided to go outside and wait on the porch. This was the same day that the snow storm had come to the state and it was about 20 degrees and a strong wind. I live in a small town of about 800 people, but 1 block from the hospital. The roads had been cleared and so the EMT’s were there quick. He was treated at the hospital and then life watched to Wichita. One of the medics on the life flight was one of my department’s entry team medics and I go to church with both doctors and a couple of the nurses. That helped to make me feel better. When he got to Wichita, the trauma doc gave him a local and cut the bullet out. He was released from the hospital to come home the next afternoon. That night I spent three hours on my hands and knees cleaning my son’s blood up. That’s a smell and feeling I will never get rid of.
My son is a good kid and smart, but that is no guarantee that bad thing won’t happen. I found out later that he had been doing things like this for the last couple of months. I have taken him shooting many times and gave him a rifle and pistol (Nagants for both) for the last two Birthdays. He knew that he shouldn’t be doing what he was, but till this point I had no clue that I couldn’t trust him. I thought that the spare keys were hidden, but that was a mistake on my part, that thank God didn’t have more serious consequences then it did. I had been thinking about a good gun safe before this and was thinking of getting one with my tax rebate this year anyway. Now it will be a must get before they guns come back to my house. I had my duty gun (Glock 22) in the same cabinet, but inside a TSA lockbox that was also locked, but the keys were also in the room as well as a S&W 28 (unloaded). If it had been one of those two things would have been different.
I hope that this will help someone else from having to go though this. I attached picture of the round. It was a .380 Golden Saber 102 gr. I think the flat spot was from when the doc took it out of his leg. As you can see it didn't even start to open up. I think you could reload it and use it again.
As I told a friend this wasn't luck this was proof of God, other wise instead of planning Christmas, I'd be planning a funeral.
My son is a good kid and smart, but that is no guarantee that bad thing won’t happen. I found out later that he had been doing things like this for the last couple of months. I have taken him shooting many times and gave him a rifle and pistol (Nagants for both) for the last two Birthdays. He knew that he shouldn’t be doing what he was, but till this point I had no clue that I couldn’t trust him. I thought that the spare keys were hidden, but that was a mistake on my part, that thank God didn’t have more serious consequences then it did. I had been thinking about a good gun safe before this and was thinking of getting one with my tax rebate this year anyway. Now it will be a must get before they guns come back to my house. I had my duty gun (Glock 22) in the same cabinet, but inside a TSA lockbox that was also locked, but the keys were also in the room as well as a S&W 28 (unloaded). If it had been one of those two things would have been different.
I hope that this will help someone else from having to go though this. I attached picture of the round. It was a .380 Golden Saber 102 gr. I think the flat spot was from when the doc took it out of his leg. As you can see it didn't even start to open up. I think you could reload it and use it again.
As I told a friend this wasn't luck this was proof of God, other wise instead of planning Christmas, I'd be planning a funeral.
