Gun Shop Manager Offers Insight into Hebron Child Shooting

HEBRON, Md. - A 4-year-old Hebron boy is dead after Maryland State Police said he apparently shot himself Monday night. They said that the child somehow got a hold of his father's gun.

"He fired that weapon, striking himself and that bullet struck his mother who was asleep in the bed," said Greg Shipley, an MSP spokesman. "The victim child and his mother as well as his sister were all in this bedroom area when this occurred. The sister was not injured."

While police continue their investigation, there are a lot of questions as to exactly what happened.

The type of gun involved in the incident is raising even more questions about what actually may have happened.

Authorities said it was a .44 caliber revolver. It is a large gun that some like Jamie Wink of Wink's Sporting Goods in Princess Anne said may have been too heavy for a 4-year-old to handle.

"I was raised around guns my whole life," said Wink, "And never was there a gun around like that could you could get a hold of."

On Tuesday, Wink gave WBOC some insight into the difficulty of firing a large caliber handgun, especially for a young child.

"Most times when a kid doesn't have strength in their fingers, they would hold it like this and use their thumb to pull it," he said while pointing a .44 caliber toward himself.

Wink said that he has own questions about the injuries sustained by the child's mother.

"If it was more than one shot then I don't see how that would've happened," he said, "The 4-year-old would have dropped the gun after the first shot with the loud noise by his face."

Wink compared the weight of two different .44 calibers and the difference was significant.

"It probably weighs a pound or less," he said of one of the lighter weight caliber. "This one weighs close to three  pounds."

Wink said he does not understand how a child could even have the strength to pull the trigger.

"It was dumb luck that he could even shoot it to begin with. The trigger pull is pretty stiff."

The boy's mother is at Peninsula Regional Medical Center being treated for what are being considered non-life-threatening injuries.

Shipley said that because police are in the preliminary stages of the investigation, they are not yet releasing information as to where exactly the gun came from, except that the gun belonged to the boy's father and it was not locked up.