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Heart-stopping gun recoil blamed in hunting accident that killed boy
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A 12-year-old boy was killed when the butt of his shotgun struck his chest and stopped his heart, authorities said.
Hunter Troxel was hunting with his father, Craig, on Monday in some woods near their home in Harpster in southern Wyandot County when the boy fired his shotgun at a deer and missed, said Wyandot County Sheriff Michael Hetzel. His father fired his 12-gauge at the deer, then noticed his son was gasping for air. The boy collapsed, and the father called for help.
The sheriff said it appears that the gun recoiled when it was fired and struck Hunter in the chest.
The boy was taken to Wyandot Memorial Hospital after the 3 p.m. incident and then flown to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The blow from the shotgun hit him at a certain time during the electrical sequence that causes the heart to beat, disrupting the nerve impulses and stopping his heart, Franklin County Coroner Brad Lewis said. His office examined the boy’s body Tuesday.
The sheriff said it was possible the boy was not holding his gun properly and that’s why it hit him where it did. "He was just a small young man, only 12 years old," Hetzel said.
This type of death is relatively rare, and it’s unclear why some blows to the chest stop the heart and others don’t, Lewis said.
"It really was a tragic, freak accident," he said. "It’s a terrible quirk of fate that you get hit at that particular moment in time."
I don't intend to cast a pall on hunting. The possibility of an occurrence like this would have never occurred to me. Read, learn, enjoy your time with your children; you never know.