Gun Safety

Boy, 2, Is Dead After Finding Loaded Handgun

On his Myspace.com page, Jason R. Matteau lists "shooting rifle and pistol" first among his interests and "losing my son" as his greatest fear. There's also a photo of Matteau, 27, pulling his smiling, 2-year-old son Wyatt close to him.

Thursday morning, shortly after 9 a.m., Wyatt, blond haired and blue eyed, found a loaded handgun in the family's apartment in the Jewett City section and picked it up.

The next sounds neighbors reported hearing were the screams of Wyatt's mother, Rebecca, and the sirens of medics, an ambulance and state police cars. The bullet had struck Wyatt in the head. He was rushed by ambulance to William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, then transferred to Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford, where he died about 11 a.m., state police said.

"This truly was an accident, a very tragic accident," said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a state police spokesman. Still, Vance said, detectives will conduct a "complete and thorough" investigation and submit their findings to the state's attorney's office for review. Troopers also contacted the state Department of Children and Families, Vance said. "They'll examine it from their perspective."

Vance would not say where the gun was kept in the home. State law makes it a crime to store loaded firearms in an area where the owner reasonably should know that someone under 16 could find them.

"A weapon is a dangerous instrument. It should be unloaded, it should not be accessible to any child," Vance said. On his Myspace.com page, Jason R. Matteau lists "shooting rifle and pistol" first among his interests and "losing my so... more

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