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Police chief indicted after boy killed by Uzi
BOSTON (Reuters) - A police chief was indicted on Thursday for involuntary manslaughter in the death of an 8-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi submachine gun at a Massachusetts weapons show.
Christopher Bizilj lost control of the weapon on October 26 at the Machine Gun Shoot & Firearms Expo in Westfield, about 100 miles west of the state capital Boston, police said.
Pelham Police Chief Edward Fleury, owner of COP Firearms & Training that co-sponsored the event, faces another four counts of furnishing a machine gun to someone under age 18.
The grand jury also indicted the sportsman's club where the expo was held and two men who supplied the Uzi that killed the boy.
"It is not a hunting weapon. It has a rate of fire of 1,700 rounds per minute," Hampden County District Attorney William Bennett said of the Uzi.
Under Massachusetts law, children can fire a weapon if they are supervised by a licensed instructor and have consent from a parent or legal guardian. But the law bars the furnishing of machine guns to minors regardless of whether parents consent, said Bennett.
The boy's father was 10 feet behind the boy with a camera as his son fired the weapon.
Fleury was not immediately available for comment.
There are an estimated 250 million privately owned guns in the United States, which has a population of about 300 million. About 30,000 Americans a year die from gun wounds.
(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Xavier Briand)
