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Profile of an Accidental Shooting
"He was shot accidentally by his best friend, Michael, who was 14."
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By Jacinda Abcarian
Accidental shootings make up only a small part of the statistics for people killed by guns each year, but there are more of these than there are of the school shootings we hear so much about. For the most part, these victims are remembered only by those closest to them. Youth Radio reporter Jacinda Abcarian knows two young people whose lives were changed forever when a gun was fired by accident.
On a spring afternoon in 1994, Kenzo Dix died at age 15. He was shot accidentally by his best friend, Michael, who was 14. I knew Michael and Kenzo’s brother, Kalani, from high school in Berkeley. Like it or not, Michael and Kalani are forever linked by this tragedy. They both lost the closest friend they'd ever had. Michael, the shooter, was Kenzo’s best friend since elementary school. Kalani was Kenzo’s older brother, and his only sibling.
To mark the fifth anniversary of Kenzo's death, we invited Kalani and Michael, in separate interviews, to talk about what happened that day. Michael says it began with a little pellet gun.
MICHAEL (on tape)
My friends would come over. We'd just kind of do sadistic things like shooting birds or something like that and, like, play with the pellet gun or whatever, and so we were hanging out and just listening to music, and I had talked to him about my dad's gun before and he was, you know, interested, just like any other 15-year-old kid, you know. So I decided to go downstairs in my father's bedroom. I pick up the gun and take out the clip to see if it's loaded or not, and it is, and I decided to take an empty clip. I bring both of them upstairs and slide the clip in and as it clicks, Kenzo turns around and he goes, ‘Oh, cool,' and I look down and take my finger off the safety, and I don't even aim. It's just--next thing you know, I just heard a pop, and my eyes opened up and I was shocked. I look over, and I see Kenzo hunched over, and I think he's joking around because of the sound, you know. And I walk over to him and I kind of push him a little bit, you know, a ‘Quit messing around' kind of thing, and I realize he's not joking around. He's hunched over, just barely conscious, kind of moaning, just like a creepy moan, like you don't want to hear. It just stays with you. And you just--I picked him up, or tried to, at least, and laid him across the floor in my bedroom and grabbed a bag, a duffel bag that I had, and stuffed it under his head, pushed his head back and tried to open his mouth so he could breathe, but he was--his body was starting to go into shock. I couldn't—I mean, I was helpless, like I didn't--I thought I knew what I was doing, but nothing worked. And my stepmother runs in and goes, What the hell happened?' and I go, ‘I shot Kenzo. I shot Kenzo.’ and she goes ‘What?’
JACINDA
The bullet entered through Kenzo’s arm and went into his chest. He died within an hour.
MICHAEL (on tape)
I just kept telling him I love him and I’m sorry and just—it’s hard when you’re in the position where you have to tell someone everything you’ve ever wanted to tell him in a minute. Things get jumbled and, you know, guys don't tell, you know, ‘I love you, man. We're like best friends’ or whatever, and you don't talk about that. It's just something that just kind of happens, and then when you're just placed in that position you just--just everything you've ever felt just comes out, you know?
KALANI (on tape)
I knew something was up right away because, you know, both my parents were in the living room, and they looked really sad. And I just came in and...
JACINDA
The victim's brother, Kalani Dix.
KALANI (on tape)
And then I went to the living room, and they just--they told me that Kenzo had been killed, that he'd been shot, and we sat around there for a while, and we were just silent, and we just didn't know
what to think of it. I didn't know if I should believe it or how--I didn't know how it happened, really. And it didn't really hit me till a friend of mine called later that evening and wanted to hang out with me, and when I started telling him why I couldn't hang out and what had happened, it just hit me, and I just started crying, and I just totally lost it. I couldn't really handle myself.
MICHAEL (on tape)
I don't know--it's funny. Even though he was starting to pass on, I felt like our lives together as friends just kind of like flashed before my eyes, and I just started thinking about all the times from fifth grade to ninth grade, just every little, like, stupid thing, you know--going to this park by his house and sitting on top of this rock and watching the sun set. Little things--throwing water balloons at cars and, you know--the stuff kids did. And it just all came out, like in the short span, in, you know, a couple
minutes.
JACINDA
Michael pled guilty to manslaughter without malice and now has a felony on his police record. He did not serve time in prison. He's spent the last years taking classes at community college and working odd jobs for his father's business. Michael will begin art college in the fall. Kalani went away to college within a year after his brother's death. He says he often found it difficult to act like a normal kid, but over the years, he's made some peace with what happened.
KALANI (on tape)
I think about my brother every day, probably still to this day. You know, I often think how it would be if he was still around and what he would be doing and things. For a long time, I didn't talk to Michael because, you know, it was just too much. But we've talked now, and I don't hold it against
him. Me and Michael now are on good terms and, you know, we talk and we're friends.
JACINDA
Kalani’s parents have become gun control activists. They sued Beretta, the manufacturer of the gun that killed their son. They say the gun lacked adequate safety warnings, that it appeared unloaded when one bullet remained in the chamber. Now there's a wave of wrongful-death lawsuits against gun companies. Kenzo’s case was among the first. Last November, in a close vote, a jury in Oakland, California, found the company not guilty. In interviews afterwards, some jurors placed the liability on Michael as the shooter and on his father as the owner of the gun. Michael says his dad never talks about the shooting, maybe because he doesn’t want to add to the burden his son is carrying.
MICHAEL (on tape)
Now mostly I just think about his family. There's never been, like, real bitterness, which I've treasured, because I don't know if I could have gotten on without that. But I thank them for being so understanding. It was just an awful feeling to know that, you know, you'd already accidentally
shot your friend, but now you had killed him. You know, he's not going to play basketball any more or, like, apply for college and do SATs and never have, like, a steady girlfriend and never--you know, I'm in my second year of college, you know. He should be here with me. I cut that short. I ended that.
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