Charles Vacca, 39, was teaching a harmless nine-year-old how to aim and shoot with an automatic weapon at the Last Stop outdoor shooting range in Arizona, where he works.
“All right, go ahead and give me one shot,” he instructed, leveling the gun to the silhouette target a few feet ahead.
No one predicted the result to be fatal.
The unnamed 9-year-old, wearing bright pink shorts with her hair in a long braid, listened calmly while her parents stood nearby, recording on a cellphone. Taking hold of the gun—an Israeli-made Uzi submachine, not a child’s toy—she fired one shot before Vacca readjusted her stance and grip.
“Full auto,” he said calmly, as the trigger pulled and several rounds were fired in rapid sequence. The recoil caused the gun to lurch out of control, and Vacca was shot in the head.
A video released by an unnamed source shows the brief moments before the horrific incident on Monday, August 25. Vacca was airlifted to a nearby Las Vegas hospital for treatment, and pronounced dead several hours later.
“It’s an awful shame,” Greg Danas, the president of G&G Firearms Experts, told CNN News. “He shouldn’t have been to the left side of the gun…but that child should not have been shooting anything other than a single-shot firearm.”
Experts say the automatic Uzi was a definite wrong choice of firearm to be teaching a child how to shoot.
“That’s not a kid’s gun,” said Greg Block, who runs Self-Defense Firearms Training based in California. He also had something to say about the instructor’s position, hovering directly to the left of the young girl. “He [Vacca] was literally in the line of fire. He did pretty much everything wrong, and I don’t like saying that because it cost the man his life.”
Sam Scarmardo, who operates the Arizona Last Stop shooting range where the incident took place, told KLAS-TV Las Vegas that “they really don’t know what happened.” No other comments were made from the gun range representatives.
“Our guys are trained to basically hover over people when they are shooting,” Scarmardo said. “If they’re shooting right-handed, we have our right-hand behind them ready to push the weapon out of the way. And if they’re left-handed, same thing.”
The shooting range’s website states that children between ages 8 and 17 can fire a weapon only if accompanied by a parent or guardian, and under the watchful supervision of an instructor. Scarmardo said that this policy has always been a standard practice in shooting ranges; however, the Last Stop’s policies are now under review.
Phoenix-based gun safety expert Ronald Scott told the Associated Press that most shooting ranges have an age limit and strict safety rules for lessons. Instructors usually have their hands directly on the gun when children are learning to fire.
“You can’t give a 9-year-old an Uzi and expect her to control it,” Scott commented.
Investigation by OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) was completed Monday, and there are no pending charges, according to the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office. The case is being handled as an “industrial accident.” While the cause and manner of death is still pending, the number of times Vacca was shot was not mentioned.
Incidentally, this was not the first deadly occurrence involving a child and a Uzi gun. In 2008, 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj was firing a micro Uzi when he accidentally shot himself in the head at a gun expo in Massachusetts.
Monday’s fatal accident has sparked nationwide debate over tighter gun control laws and the legal age limit to firing a weapon.
“I have regret we let this child shoot, and I have regret that Charlie was killed in the incident,” said Scarmardo regrettably.
(With reports from Associated Press, CNN, and ABC News.)