WHITE HILLS, Ariz., Aug. 26 (UPI) -- A firing range instructor is dead after being accidentally shot in the head by a 9-year-old girl Monday.
Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City, Arizona worked at Burgers and Bullets, a firing range located about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas in White Hills, Arizona that caters to tourists, offering guests the opportunity to fire fully automatic weapons and eat big bacon cheeseburgers.
On Monday morning, Vacca was instructing a nine-year-old girl visiting the range with her parents while on a family vacation in the use of an Uzi, a fully automatic 9mm handgun, when the girl lost control of the firearm and accidentally shot Vacca in the head.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mohave County Sheriff Jim McCabe said the girl had successfully fired the weapon in single-shot mode several times, but when she pulled the gun's trigger in automatic mode, the recoil from several successive shots sent the gun over the girl's head, causing her to accidentally and fatally strike Vacca.
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Vacca, immediately airlifted to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, was pronounced dead Monday around 9 p.m.
"This is a rarity for something like this to happen," a spokesperson for the Mohave Country Sherrif's Office told the LA Times.
No citations will be issued and no charges will be filed, according to McCabe.
The director of training for The Range 702 in Las Vegas, Jeff Frichette, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that, hypothetically, a 9-year-old could be capable of firing a fully-automatic weapon. The decision on whether it is safe is at the discretion of the range officer and based on physical and safety guidelines which should include a child first mastering smaller-caliber, semi-automatic weapons.
