Father who accidentally killed son says don’t blame guns

When William “Clayton” Brumby brought three of his children to High Noon Gun Range Sunday, he was trying to teach them a lesson drilled often in the Brumby household: how to use guns safely.

The Brumbys kept guns at home to defend themselves, Brumby told CNN, and he said he “wanted them to be comfortable around them and understand them."

But Brumby, 64, instead accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old son Stephen when, while trying to remove a hot shell that fell into the back of his shirt, he fired a bullet from a .22 caliber semi automatic pistol that hit his son behind him. Stephen was taken to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where he died. The other two siblings were not hurt.

Brumby told CNN that the shooting was “a very freak accident” and blamed himself for firing the fatal shot.

“The gun didn't kill my boy,” he said. “I did.”

The Brumbys described themselves to multiple news outlets as a gun-conscious family from the start, training each of their seven children in gun safety when they were old enough to learn.

Their dad “wanted to take us to the shooting range to spend time with us, but also teach us how to be a man, how to protect the family when it needed to be protected,” 24-year-old brother David Brumby told WTSP.

Stephen, the fourth of seven children, had been raised the same way, going to target practice with his father and siblings when he wasn’t playing the ukulele and piano for his worship band at church or fishing or playing tennis. Stephen was home schooled, and his father told CNN that he doted on his youngest sister, who has spina bifida.

Sunday afternoon’s tragedy shook them all to their core, David Brumby said.

“It was just a complete freak accident,” he told WTSP. “I cried so much yesterday that my eyes were stinging.”

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, which said that it had not filed charges against Brumby, said in a statement that the father had accidentally pointed the gun “directly behind him” when trying to remove a shell casing that fell into the back of his shirt, Bay News 9 reported.

But David Brumby, who saw the shooting happen, insisted that his father had pointed the gun up when he was trying to remove the casing, and that the bullet had bounced off the ceiling and hit Stephen.

“Because [the bullet] was super hot, the knee-jerk reaction was to try to brush it off,” David Brumby told WTSP. “He pulled the gun hand up and tried to brush it off him and the gun went off into the ceiling and ricocheted into my little brother Stephen.”

"No matter how calm you try to stay, there's no way to wipe the images away from your mind of your little brother bleeding out in your arms," said David Brumby to WFTS.

The gun range where Stephen was fatally shot was open Monday, and co-owner John Buchan told WTSP that Brumby and his family had frequented his gun range in the past safely.

"The worst possible thing that could possibly happen, happened,” he told WTSP. “He was a good guy — teaching his kids the right way."

Buchan also told WFTS that the incident was “a freak breakdown in the personal safety of owning and operating a firearm that never should've happened.”

The family started a GoFundMe page after Stephen’s death, which had raised more than $17,000 since it was started Monday. The fundraising page called Stephen “a meteor that couldn’t be contained” and a promising son whose life was cut short too soon.

Stephen’s father told CNN that he was still trying to come to terms with taking his son’s life. But one thing won’t change in the Brumby household: The family will still keep guns at home.

Brumby also said he wants his tragedy to remind parents that "every round in the gun is your responsibility.”

“When it fires you need to stand to account for it it,” he said, according to the network. “That's what I've spent the last two days doing, accounting for my operating error.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Father who accidentally killed son says don’t blame guns."