A 9-year-old girl who fatally shot a gun range instructor with an Uzi submachine gun last week told her mother immediately afterward that the weapon was too much for her to handle and had hurt her shoulder, a sheriff's report released on Tuesday said, according to The Associated Press.
The girl's mother told officers that immediately following the shooting, her daughter "turned to her (and) told her the gun was too much for her and hurt her shoulder," the report said, the AP reported. "(The mother) said no one knew Vacca was shot until the other instructor ran over," an officer wrote.
The girl's family also did not realize right away that the instructor, 39-year-old Charles Vacca, had been struck by a round from the gun, according to the Mohave County Sheriff's Office report, the AP reported.
Another officer, citing another instructor at the range, said that when the girl fired the weapon, it went "straight up in the air." Vacca fell to his left toward a table, blood pouring from the wound, according to the AP.
Vacca had been showing the girl how to fire an Uzi at the Arizona Last Stop gun range in White Hills last week when the recoil caused her to lose control of the high-powered weapon, the sheriff's office has said, according to the AP.
When officers arrived, they found Vacca on the ground still breathing and moaning as another man applied a towel to his head. Blood covered a folding table next to him, the AP reported.
The sheriff's office has said no criminal charges were pending after what it called an "industrial accident," the AP reported. State occupational health and safety officials have opened their own investigation.
The girl's family issued a statement through an attorney on Tuesday expressing "sadness" for Vacca's death, according to the AP.
"Although certain people will seek to use this tragedy for their own partisan purposes and agendas, the family asks all compassionate Americans to pray for their children and the entire Vacca family," the statement said in part, the AP reported.
