Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9306140111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It was a total accident," the girl, 13, said. "To everyone's knowledge, there were no bullets in the gun."
Vinton police said William Hagy, 18, of Bedford, was playing with the gun in front of some friends at a picnic shelter beside the Vinton Pool.
The magazine of the .25-caliber automatic had been taken out, police said. But unknown to Hagy, they said, one bullet remained in the chamber.
Police said Hagy put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The gun went off. Hagy was pronounced dead at Roanoke Memorial Hospital at 11:50 p.m. Friday.
The 13-year-old witness said Hagy had no intention of killing himself.
The girl was traumatized by Hagy's death and asked that her name not be used. She talked about what she saw Friday night during a telephone interview while her mother, Teresa Minton of Vinton, listened on an extension at their home.
The girl said she wanted to talk about the accident to set the record straight. She said she was upset because one television station had reported that Hagy's death was the result of a "dangerous game of Russian roulette."
"There was no Russian roulette," she said.
Russian roulette is not possible with an automatic pistol. It involves intentionally placing a bullet in a revolver, then spinning the cylinder before aiming it and shooting at one's head.
The girl gave this account of what happened:
Just before 6 p.m. a half-dozen teen-agers, boys and girls, were hanging out and talking at the picnic shelter. Hagy had not joined them yet.
One older boy had a gun. He was showing it to the kids and talking about selling it to someone.
At one point, while the other youngsters were turned away and talking, the boy with the gun fired a shot into the woods away from the shelter and the pool.
Then the boy took the magazine out of the gun and put it into his gym bag and returned to the pool for a few minutes.
Later, the gun's owner returned. Hagy also joined the group. The gun came out of the bag again.
Hagy had it for a few minutes, turning it over in his hands to examine it and pointing it at the ground.
One boy told Hagy something like: "Put it away. It's dangerous. Don't do that."
The gun's owner told Hagy it was empty because he had taken the magazine out. The 13-year-old told Hagy she had, indeed, seen the owner do that.
Hagy then put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
The girl said she had known Hagy for only a while, but "from what I knew and what I'd heard about him, he was really a nice guy. He just fit in with everybody."
None of the other witnesses could be reached for comment Saturday.
Vinton police earlier Saturday said they were still investigating the shooting, but they believed it was an accident. Department spokesmen could not be reached Saturday night to confirm the earlier shot or other details of the girl's account. On Friday night, police had said they were not sure whether the gun had belonged to Hagy or to someone else.
Mary Beth Layman, special events coordinator for the town of Vinton, said six of the teen-agers who were at the shooting scene have been suspended from the pool until town officials can review the police report on the shooting.
Minton, the 13-year-old's mother, said she thought that was unfair because the shooting was an accident and the kids who didn't handle the gun were simply bystanders. Suspending them wrongly suggests that they were to blame, Minton said.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB