June 14, 2012
By Allie Robinson, Tricities.com
BRISTOL, Va. — The 12-year-old who was shot in the head Wednesday during an apparent hunting accident died early Thursday, authorities said. Brandon Lord, whose obituary is published in today’s Bristol Herald Courier, was a Christian who had recently asked his parents to donate his organs if he were to die, said his grandfather, Carl Richardson. Everyone liked Brandon, Richardson said, and the community around the 11000 block of Goose Creek road where the incident happened has been supportive.
The boy and his 15-year-old brother were hunting groundhogs in a field behind the house when the boy was shot around 6 p.m., said Washington County, Va., Sheriff’s Lt. Byron Ashbrook. No one else was hurt, and the boys were being indirectly supervised by a family member, he said. …
Excluding this incident, 43 people have died in Virginia as a result of hunting incidents in the past 10 years, according to records kept by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ Law Enforcement Hunter Safety Education Unit. Of those fatalities, five were children; and two of those were accidental discharges that killed the teenager who was hunting, according to the report. Four fatalities involved children as the apparent accidental shooter.