30-year-old Joseph Austin Smith of Wichita, Kansas, was killed during a hunting trip when his dog stepped on a rifle and killed his owner.
According to the Sumner County Sheriff’s office, Smith was on a weekend hunting trip with the owner of the truck he was in when a dog stepped on the rifle and discharged the gun, fatally wounding Smith.
The sheriff’s office said that the police arrived within minutes of the call and, after finding Smith in the front passenger seat of the truck, started CPR. However, Smith died from the gunshot wound.
The dog, which belongs to the truck’s owner, was in the back seat of the truck with some hunting gear and the rifle when the dog stepped on the gun, according to police. The investigation is ongoing, police said.
It is not clear whether anyone else was in the truck at the time.
These types of accidents are unfortunately not uncommon. In 2022, a 32-year-old Turkish hunter, Ozgur Gevrekoglu, was shot and killed when his dog stepped on the loaded shotgun in the back seat of his truck.
Similarly, in 2017, a pheasant hunter in Iowa was accidentally shot and wounded when a dog stepped on the shotgun trigger guard and the gun fired. At the time, Ken Lonneman, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources conservation officer, told CBS News that four hunters and two dogs were looking for the game birds when one of the hunters placed a loaded shotgun on the ground.
And in 2018, a New Mexico man told CBS affiliate KRQE-TV that he was shot by his dog named Charlie who is a 120-pound rottweiler mix. Charlie and a loaded rifle were in the back seat of his truck when Charlie’s paw got caught in the trigger and allowed the gun to discharge sending a bullet through the driver’s seat and into the man’s back. The man broke a few ribs and shattered his collar bone according to the report.
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Dog kills Joseph Austin Smith after stepping on rifle and shooting hunter in the back. The dog was in the back seat of the truck with hunting gear — including the rifle — when the dog stepped on the gun, according to police.— Fox3 Now (@fox3news) January 25, 2023
