ON one end of the phone is an officer trained to take difficult phone calls and send help. On the other end is a 10-year-old boy who accidentally shot and killed his sister.
The little boy knows, in that moment, that his life has changed forever.
“My sister is choking,” Sean Smith says, stifling back tears and clearly panicked.
“She’s dead,” he says.
“She’s dead?” the 911 dispatcher asks the boy.
“Yes, please get my mum and dad. Oh my God!” he screams back in a high-pitched voice years away from puberty and too young to be experiencing such horror.
Moments earlier, Sean had been looking for his Nintendo games in the top drawer of his father’s bedside table. Instead he found a gun, pointed it at the window and pretended to fire.
Only the gun was loaded, and when the bullet cleared the chamber, Sean’s sister, 8, ran in front of the weapon.
The bullet went through her shoulder and into her heart. She died in his arms, despite his best efforts to stop the bleeding and keep his only sibling alive.
“I didn’t know my dad’s gun was loaded and I shot her. I didn’t mean to,” Sean told police.
Erin Smith’s death was 26 years ago, but it feels like yesterday to Sean who still lives with the guilt and last week talked about it publicly for the first time.
The family’s story is a timely reminder for Americans who continue to kill each other with firearms.
There are around 110 fatal shootings involving children under 14 each year in the US.
It’s a timely reminder for Australia, too, where a handful of politicians are lobbying for more guns, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in an attack on a Sydney police station and a 12-year-old boy was named our youngest ever terror suspect.
‘I DIDN’T MEAN TO SHOOT HER’
Mr Smith told CNN he was just “waving it around” when he shot and killed his baby sister.
“I aimed it out of the window and as I pulled the trigger she was running out of the room. Unfortunately, it did strike her in the shoulder,” he said.
“I immediately ran, got the phone, called 911. I picked her up, held her in my lap and unfortunately she passed away. I never got to see her in the hospital so the last image I have of her is in my lap.”
He said he was haunted by the shooting and asked by friends at school: “What was it like to kill your sister?”
Her death became a barrier between him and his parents who for years struggled to talk about it. Sean blamed himself and his father blamed himself. Sean’s life spiralled out of control. There were hard drugs, theft and prison time before straightening out and starting a family of his own.
He knows what a weapon in the wrong hands can do and spends his time warning others about guns in the family home.
A weapon found its way into the wrong hands at Parramatta at the beginning of this month and the consequences there were tragic.
Police accountant Curtis Cheng was shot and killed before police returned fire, killing the 15-year-old gunman.
It’s a bad time for independent MP Bob Katter and Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie to be calling for more guns but that’s exactly what they’re doing. In particular, they want to see a rapid-fire shotgun capable of firing eight shots in eight seconds allowed in Australia.
“To expand gun ownership? I think that’s a great thing,” Senator McKenzie told news.com.au
Ms McKenzie, who grew up around guns and took journalists clay shooting last week, makes no apologies for her pro-gun stance.
She says children are at risk from “a lot of things in society” and putting guns in their hands and teaching them to shoot is the safest thing we could possibly do.
She rejects the idea that more guns equals more danger, but she knows it’s not a popular opinion.
‘IT’S BECOME TABOO TO TALK ABOUT GUNS’
Ms McKenzie admits there’s a real problem with guns in this country, but it’s not hunters or sporting shooters who are responsible.
She says the teen who opened fire on Curtis Cheng was armed with an illegal firearm and there’s very little that can be done to keep them out of the country.
“When we think about organised crime, about bikie gangs, there’s a real issue with illegal firearms. These aren’t guns owned by the guy at the rifle range, these are guns brought in through ports and bought on the black market.”
She says she “can’t believe the attitude towards guns in this country” and wishes they weren’t such a taboo subject.
“It’s almost become taboo to talk about guns, to be upfront.”
She says instead of rejecting guns outright, Australian parents should be arming themselves and teaching their children to shoot safely.
“Learning how to shoot, learning how to hunt, is hugely important. It’s been a strong family pastime for hundreds of thousands of Australian families. All of the law abiding firearm owners I know who have children are very careful with how they’ve raised children around guns.”
Australia has a National Firearms Agreement which outlines which weapons can be owned and how they must be stored. Ms McKenzie said the safeguards are what separates Australia from the US and prevents shootings like Mr Smith’s in 1989.
“I think when we think of issues with guns, we think of the US. We have a different cultural heritage and history.”
The Nationals senator defended her call to see the Adler 110 returned to Australia. She said there was a “misunderstanding about its lethality” but others disagree.
Walter Mikac, whose wife Nanette, 36, and daughters Alannah, six, and Madeline were killed in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, said last week he was worried about the watering down of Australia’s tough gun laws.
“We’re not in a country where you need semiautomatic firearms; we’re not in a country where you need to be able to fire eight shots at a time to protect yourself,” he said.
“I think we want to be individual in that we can live as a peaceful nation, not as a nation where everyone’s in fear of someone else having a firearm.”
A FAMILY TORN APART
Sean Smith, who bravely told his story this week, knows how easily things can go wrong. His parents had the best intentions when they armed themselves and, up until the night before the shooting, kept the .38 revolver out of reach.
Larry, Sean’s father, was given the gun by his father a few weeks before the June 5, 1989 shooting.
He had it stored safely in the closet but took it out the night before the shooting when he spotted someone trying to climb over his fence. He absent-mindedly stored it in his top drawer. It was still loaded. Fate and a 10-year-old boy’s wayward curiosity did the rest.
He says he’s forgiven himself but will never forget.
“I know I’ve forgiven myself, and I’m pretty sure Erin’s forgiven me. It was about 20 years later when I finally could truly and honestly forgive myself. It was an accident. It was an accident.”
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