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Deputies: Boy Hit With Metal Fragment At Shooting Range In El Dorado County

EL DORADO COUNTY (CBS13) — A 7-year-old is in the hospital with a gunshot wound after authorities say he was shot over the weekend while at target practice in El Dorado County.

The incident happened along remote Bottlehill Road outside of Georgetown. El Dorado County Sheriff's deputies say a bay area family set up a shooting range on their property.

One of the two people shooting at the targets was a 7-year-old boy using a .22-caliber bolt action youth rifle.

"While they were doing this the boy jumped up and complained of pain in his chest," said Lt Tim Becker. "His father looked saw a little hole in a t-shirt he was wearing and blood behind the hole."

The boy's father rushed him to the fire station in town, and the boy was taken by helicopter to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

Becker speaks from personal experience as to how the boy may have been shot.

"I don't know exactly what happened out there, but I have had a ricochet where a tiny fragment hit me in the chest and caused it to bleed," Becker said.

A metal fragment was found in the boy's chest.

"The patrolmen had looked into it when they got out there and spoke to the family and it looks like they were doing everything responsible they should've been doing, and nobody was getting guns pointed at them in any way shape or form," Becker said.

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