WESTFIELD, Mass. — With an instructor watching, an 8-year-old boy at a gun fair aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.
It was his first time shooting a fully automatic machine gun, and the recoil of the weapon was too much for him. He lost control and fatally shot himself in the head.
Police said Christopher Bizilj of Ashford, Conn., was pronounced dead at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., Sunday afternoon, shortly after firing a 9mm micro Uzi submachine gun at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club, co-sponsored by C.O.P. Firearms & Training.
Christopher, a third-grader, was attending the show with his father and sixth-grade brother, Colin. Christopher had fired handguns and rifles before, but Sunday was his first time firing an automatic weapon, said his father, Charles Bizilj.
Bizilj said his family avoided the larger weapons, but he let his son try the Uzi because it’s a small weapon with little recoil.
Police are calling the shooting an accident but are investigating whether everyone connected with the incident had proper weapons permits.
