Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Two men unintentionally shot and killed by man cleaning handgun

25-year-old Kevin McElrath, of London, Kentucky was cleaning his .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun at his home in the early hours of Thursday morning. He took the magazine out of the gun and didn't realize there was a bullet still in the chamber. Kevin unintentionally discharged the gun. The bullet struck him in the head and then kept going. It then struck his friend, 22-year-old Eric Partain, in the head.
Kevin died at the scene. Eric was airlifted to the hospital in Lexington where he died later in the day.
"I've never seen anything as tragic as this," said a sheriff's spokesperson. "A very unusual case."

4 comments:

DaveL said...

Surely they mean the gun discharged while they were clearing it, or possibly while stripping it. Having a negligent discharge while cleaning a gun is like getting your dick caught in your zipper while taking a shower.

Unknown said...

DaveL, I don't know what you trying to say with that, but it certainly is possible to begin cleaning a gun with a round in the chamber and negligently fire it.

It happens every day.

DaveL said...

No, Mike, no it's not. Have you cleaned a semi-automatic handgun before? You'll find that in order to be cleaned, it must first be stripped. That means disassembled. In every single semi-automatic handgun I'm aware of, that means the barrel (with the chamber) comes away from the slide containing the firing pin.

Casey said...

What is said here is not what really happened. Eric Partain os my boyfriend and I know for a fact someone else killed both Eric and Kevin..