Teen shoots himself trying to catch a bird

Zach White found out who rules the roost in a chicken barn, and it’s not he.

White, an 18-year-old senior at Medical Lake High School, told the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office he was on a friend’s property in the 5900 block of South Brooks Road with his girlfriend about 8:30 Friday night. He intended to go hunting for coyotes. White decided to use a live chicken as bait and went to his friend’s butchering barn to grab one. Problem is, the chickens weren’t game.

“I was trying to get chickens out of the rafters and I happened to grab a .22 rifle,” White said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I picked it up by the barrel and hit it up against the rafters. The gun set off and shot me.”

The bullet ripped through the middle of White’s right forearm and exited through the side of his elbow.

“Next,” White said, “I dropped the gun. I didn’t know if I shot myself until I reached down to pick up the gun and my hand was twitching. I took my coat off and said, ‘Oh, I think I shot myself.’ “

Since no one was at the friend’s house, White said he and his girlfriend drove to another friend’s house. The friend’s mother, a nurse, told White to get to the hospital.

White said he went to Deaconess Medical Center, where his wound was cleaned and bandaged. On Tuesday, he said he still feels sore, and realizes the whole ordeal could have been much worse.

“It’s a weird thing to go through. To know you shot yourself and came that close to dying, it’s a pretty scary deal,” he said.

“The way that everything unfolded, the bullet could have very easily come through my elbow and got me again in the chest or the leg or any number of places.”

Although he said he’s always been careful and an A student in gun safety classes, White said the accident taught him a lesson.

“Gun safety,” he said. “Common sense was really the main thing that I didn’t follow through. You’ve gotta be careful with guns.”

White also said he went back to the chicken coop to look for the bullet, but said he never found it. As for his career as a recreational coyote hunter, White said that will continue, but he plans on staying an arm’s length away from danger.