This is sad..keep the family in all your prayers.



Sunday, February 01, 2009

Screaming brought Nicole Potrekus to her living room window early Sunday afternoon. Looking out, she saw in her neighbor's driveway an 11-year-old boy lying on his back, with blood pooling around his head.

"People were screaming and we ran outside and the little boy was laying in the driveway and he had a gunshot wound," said Potrekus, a pediatric nurse who works for the Parent-Child Center in Riviera Beach. "I think the one boy carried him out."




This, Potrekus recalled Sunday, barely an hour after the bloody scene played out, was how she became the first person to try to save the 11-year-old's life. But neither she, nor the paramedics nor the doctors at Delray Medical Center, where the boy was flown by helicopter, could do anything for the child, who died at the hospital, the victim of an apparent accident.

The boy, whose name wasn't made public late Sunday, was fatally wounded by a 9-year-old child wielding a stolen .22-caliber pistol, said Lt. Mark Alexander, a commander in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Division.

"The actual discharge of the weapon does appear to be accidental," Alexander said Sunday afternoon, after his detectives interviewed witnesses and got a warrant to search the house at 4297 Lilac Circle, in a middle-class neighborhood near Kirk Road and Melaleuca Lane.

About six people, including one adult, were in the house at about noon when the boy was shot, sheriff's officials said.

Sheriff's detectives and a Department of Children and Families official still were investigating Sunday how the pistol, which was reported stolen on Jan. 11, made its way into the child's hands, sheriff's office officials said.

After the shooting, one of the boys apparently tried to hide the gun in Sanders Park just north of the house, scaling a fence and throwing down the pistol before trying to run away, a witness told detectives.

Using police dogs, deputies found the gun in the park soon after and retrieved it, said Teri Barbera, sheriff's office spokeswoman.

After investigators gather all the facts, a grand jury likely will decide how the case is handled, Alexander said.

About an hour and a half after the shooting, a woman with an untied apron dangling loosely from her neck stumbled over to the sidewalk in front of the house and, moaning in Creole, collapsed in a sobbing heap. A shouting man tried desperately to console her.

The dead boy's family refused to talk to reporters after the shooting, and instead remained bunched in a tense cluster beneath a nearby palm, their faces slackened by grief.

Potrekus, the pediatric nurse, wore a similar look as she replayed the boy's final moments in her head.

She remembered kneeling over him in the driveway, the same boy with whom she and her husband lit firecrackers in the failing light on New Year's Eve.

She saw that he was breathing and listened as her husband shouted the emergency dispatcher's instructions from across the yard.

Potrekus pressed her hand against the wound, just below the boy's left eyebrow, but it only bled more and more.

An hour later, he was gone.

Having done all that she could, she sat in a daze on her lawn, her own little boy playing around her, and gazed across the street at a pool of blood soaking into the concrete.

This is why if Parents are goin to have guns they need to keep them stored in a lockbox, unloaded with a trigger lock and the ammunition stored in a seperate lockbox, preferably combination locks.

Accidents can still happen if the parent is exhausted and overlooks one little bullet. It happened to my mother when she was a child.

I'm not a big fan of guns, but like everthing they have there advantages as well as draw backs. This Is a tragic story. It don't mean that gun should be banned. I think they should teach some sort of gun safty class in grade school. Not saying the childen should be thought how to fire a load or own gun. But to teach them the proper way handle a gun incase they come into contact with one in the home.

It is unfortunate that accidents do happen. But there are many that could be avoided by simply locking up the guns and ammunition properly if children live in the house. Parents also need to teach children about the dangers of guns.

I think you're asking too much of people to be smart enough to do things safely. I don't think the ownership of a gun should be legal.

Though I know a few excuses why guns are still legal, it still strikes me that such a dangerous object is allowed when marijuana is not. This is not to argue for the legalization of marijuana (an issue which I have not totally decided on), but to argue for the banning of gun sales.

It's an example of why gun owners (some) need to be more responsible. If you can't be responsible with a gun, you shouldn't own one.

I lived with guns, in the house.
Parents & other adults, taught that they were tools, DANGEROUS tools.
I was taught how to care for, respect what they were made for & use GUNS.
I was taught to be TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE for how I handled guns.
Taught my son the same thing.
He will teach his son's the same things.
This is what/how the gun issue SHOULD be handled.
EDUCATION & RESPONSIBILITY are the keys.

Sorry, what are the advantages? The only advantage I can come up with is safety against burglary, and there's a simple argument against that:

If you're not close to where your gun is when you hear someone breaking in, you may not be able to get to your gun. Second, if the burglar is already in your room, you won't have time to get to the locked-up gun.

Here are two alternatives:
1) Keep your valuables someplace safe and away from where a burglar would have easy access for god's sake! And realize that someone stealing your big screen is better than you shooting another human being! Seriously, relax - it's just a T.V.. Next, keep a metal baseball bat in your room. If someone breaks, hide to one side of your doorway. If the burglar enters your room, just beat him over the head, lols.

2) In the US, you don't need a license to buy a BB gun in most states (I think). If you use that gun on a burglar, he'll probably freak out about being shot at and leave.
3) Buy a bunch of throwing knives and practice everyday for 30 minutes. Sure, a kid can cut himself with a knife, but it's unlikely that he'll slit his own throat. Plus, you're going to be keeping these weapons locked up, right? And for good measure, you can coat the knives with some sort of hot sauce! That'll really burn!
4) Buy and train with a bow & arrows. Most kids won't even be able to pull the string.
5) Invest in a good security system.
6) Move to a good neighborhood.
7) Look at 1) again, lol. I think it's your best bet.

Since when have "should" and "should not"s applied to people? Breaking and entering *should not* happen, but it does. Thus, people feel like they need protection in the form of guns.



Again, with something so dangerous and arguably unnecessary as guns, one can ask, why even take the chance? Is your gun really worth more to you than your child's life? What's more, we are humans and mistakes happen. Even adults sometimes accidentally shoot other adults (Cheney recently).

To be fair, the same argument could be made against cars, but these vehicles are necessary. Second, the same argument could be made against alcohol and cigarettes, and I agree that these substances, in a better society, would be banned. Both substances have done so much damage to lives, but they are still aroundis. This is so, I guess, because of their widespread use, because these substances are very much so a part of the world's cultures, and because there are many companies that make a killing (i.e. a lot of profit) off the sales.

Being that the gun was stolen, I seriously doubt that keeping the gun safe and out of harms way was high on their priority list.

Feel for the child and family however, the gun is not to blame. Guns are an inanimate object, the people and lack of responsibility and security are to blame.

If guns kill people, does that mean pencils misspell words????

That just shows the person it was stolen from wasn't very responsible with it.

when my daughter was about 2yrs old there was neighbor kid that i would often babysit and he and my daughter were buddies. his dad i dont even know why he would let him do this. but his dad had a hunting rifle and he would let travis play with it. i question him on it one time, and his reply was well its not loaded... so freaken what you shouldnt let him play with a gun especially a 2yr old. his dad didnt have much brains.travis is 25yrs old now but i dont know how well he turned out havent seen him in many yrs

Well, you know, anything can be used as a weapon, a deadly weapon, it's not guns only. People are beaten to death, strangled, run over with cars, stabbed, drowned, drugged etc etc etc every day all over the world. Guns are not the only thing killing people. But guess what all the murders DO have in common? Yup, you guessed it, PEOPLE. Perhaps we should outlaw them?

I'm not arguing for or against gun ownership. I'm simply pointing out that unless you're going to outlaw people, outlawing guns isn't the answer to the problem.

What's more, do you think the child who pulled the trigger maliciously shot his friend in the face? Do you think that if the gun had *not* been there, this accident would have happened with, say, a length of string or a baseball bat? No, it was the presence of the gun that made this tragedy more probable. Kids are naturally curious, especially about what they "aren't supposed to handle," so finally, it's civilian access to guns in general that is the problem. Finally, guns do kill, even if there is no malicious intent.

One more thing: Heroine, porn, and torture and gas chambers are also inanimate. However, I don't think everyone would give any of these items two thumbs up. The "Guns don't kill people - people kill people" argument is and has always been lame.

Not really, cause many people are stupid or ignorant. It's the person who caused the action, whether willfully or not.

My grandfather normally did that. He locked them in a rack and put the bullets elsewhere. He was exceptionally tired from hunting one time and overlooked a bullet.

My Uncle had a bow and arrow and used a ruler for the arrow.
He shot the ruler through a hole in the screen door and the ruler went into the house and hit the gun. The gun was locked in the rack. The gun went off and hit my mother in the abdomen. She was a young child when it happened.

Yes, it was a freak accident.

Btw, my grandfather grew up with guns and was a hunter.

Not all guns kill people. Saying that they do is akin to calling everyone a murderer.