Family of deceased gun instructor sues gun range

On behalf of Aiken and Aiken P.C. Personal Injury Attorneys posted in Wrongful Death, on Sunday, April 1, 2018

Massachusetts residents may have heard about the gun instructor in Arizona who was accidentally killed by a 9-year-old girl. The 39-year-old man was helping the girl to fire an Uzi 9MM at the ‘Bullets and Burgers” gun range in August 2014. When the fully-automatic weapon recoiled during target practice, the gun instructor was hit in the head by a stray bullet. The family of the deceased gun instructor have stated that they are suing the gun range for wrongful death. The family’s attorney said that the complaint states that giving a machine gun to a child is fundamentally unsafe, and the activity that led to the victim’s death was fundamentally unsafe. The children of the victim say that they do not blame the girl who accidentally shot their father. They have stated that the girl, like their father, was a victim of the system that led to the fatal accident. After the fatal gun range accident, the victim’s family started a petition to prevent shooting ranges from allowing children younger than 15 to operate assault weapons. The deceased gun instructor’s daughter says that she hopes the gun range will change its rules so that the same kind of fatal accident does not happen again. The family of a person who was killed by a stray bullet might want to talk to an attorney about filing a wrongful death lawsuit. Even if a shooting death was unintentional, the person who was operating the gun or allowing another person to operate the gun could be deemed negligent and thus financially responsible for the family’s losses. Source: ABC News, “Family of Gun Instructor Slain by 9-Yr-Old Firing Uzi Files Wrongful Death Suit,” Sabina Ghebremedhin, Aug. 26, 2016