He played with his gun before a haircut, ‘like he usually does.’ This time it was fatal.
A man on Florida’s west coast sat down in his house to get a haircut early Thursday morning.
He was dead of a gunshot wound before the scissors met his head.
A “horrible accident,” Hernando County Sheriff’s deputies said.
According to the Hernando Sheriff’s Office, two men had just returned to a residence in Brooksville in the Tampa Bay area around 6:30 a.m. Thursday after going to a nearby convenience store. One of the men was to cut the other’s hair.
The man who was to get his hair cut took a seat atop a bucket just outside his bedroom door, deputies said. As he waited to get his hair cut, he was “playing with his firearm, like he usually does,” the witness told officers.
The gun discharged. The man who had been holding and playing with the firearm was found dead at the house by the first officer who arrived, Hernando deputies said.
He may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the shooting, deputies said.
“Witness statements and the initial forensics indicate that it was unintentional,” Hernando Sheriff Al Nienhuis said on Facebook.
“We deliberately included the possibility of intoxicants to ensure the public knew that there were likely contributing factors,” Nienhuis said. “Further investigation revealed the possibility, if not the likelihood, the male was under the influence of drugs and or alcohol at the time of the incident.”
Hernando deputies would not release any more information.
The fatal shooting remains under investigation.
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 12:30 PM.
