DEER CREEK, Texas/HARRISBURG, Ill.—A vacationing Harrisburg boy was accidentally shot and killed the first weekend in August, this at the home of his grandfather in Texas.
Daniel Wiley, 9, a student at Harrisburg schools, was at the home of his grandfather Danny Eugene Bowman, 56, with his older stepbrother (age 13, name withheld) on Friday, August 2, 2013, when he was fatally shot with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Local reports seemed to indicate that there was a level of culpability with Bowman, who was later that evening arrested and charged with a felony regarding Texas’ law on child neglect.
But the actual events weren’t as cut and dried as news reports emerging from the rural area of Clay County, Texas, presented them to be…nor were local reports here in Illinois, most of whom, apparently, didn’t talk to Texas authorities nor family, both of which elaborated on the circumstances that lead to the incident, and how devastating it is for everyone involved.
Regular visit to grandparents
Family advised that Daniel, the son of Nona Bowman and Wes Wiley, visited with his grandparents Danny and Mary Bowman in Deer Creek, Texas, a very rural area of Clay County, every summer.
This summer, Nona Bowman had just given birth to a baby daughter, and so she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Sharples, to whom the 13-year-old boy belongs, decided it would be good for both boys to go together to Nona’s parents. This would give them quality time together, and provide an atmosphere for Nona and Kenneth to have some time with the baby girl before the boys came back to attend school in Harrisburg.
The boys spent the majority of the month of July with the Bowmans on the ranch location, which had been in the Crump family for at least two generations. There, Bowman had livestock and it was the very picture of a Texas rural ranch.
Danny Bowman kept the 12-gauge shotgun in a readily accessible location, as well as the shells to it, because of animals attempting to attack his livestock frequently.
It was his practice to keep it loaded in the event that his livestock, or anyone working on the ranch, could be protected by it.
Accident occurred in backyard
On Friday evening, August 2, the day before the boys were to return home, Bowman opted to go into town (nearby Scotland) to buy some beer. His wife Mary was on her way home from work, and was stopping to get some snacks and sodas for the drive back to Illinois on the 3rd.
Bowman believed the boys would be fine in the presence of his mother-in-law, Shirley Crump, 76, as they’d been around her for the past month and everyone was used to each other, and Crump, despite being disabled and, as recounted in a police report, “barely ambulatory,” was still an adult figure for the boys to answer to.
Nevertheless, the boys were curious about Bowman’s gun.
According to police reports, after Bowman left, the 13-year-old boy went to get the gun, which had three shells loaded into it, and took it outside to the fenced-in backyard.
While back there, he dropped it on the ground as he was handing it to Daniel. When he went to pick it back up, the gun discharged, striking Daniel in the face.
Daniel fell; for whatever reason, the other boy picked up the weapon and took it back into the house.
It’s unclear who contacted emergency services nor how long it took for them to reach the remote location, but they eventually arrived and declared Daniel deceased.
Bowman, however, learned of the incident while he was still away from the house, and called his wife to tell her she needed to “get home.”
When she asked why and what had happened, she was told by her husband, “You just need to get home.”
Mischaracterization
Authorities said that the incident was reported at 6:27 p.m. and that Clay County deputies arrived first.
Daniel’s body was found lying on the ground outside the home. The gun was located by law enforcement inside, with two rounds, one in the chamber. A spent round was found outside.
Bowman was reported by sheriff’s personnel as “acting belligerent and drinking beer” when first responders, EMTs and other law enforcement arrived, and noted that he “continued to do so through the course of the investigation.”
Family said that’s probably a mischaracterization by the investigators, and that it was more likely that any “belligerence” the man displayed may have been grief over the situation…considering that in March of this year, Bowman’s son, Matt (Nona’s brother/Daniel’s uncle), had committed suicide, at age 25, in the very same backyard, about three feet from where Daniel’s body had fallen.
Bowman was taken into custody at about 9:15 p.m., on a preliminary count of Abandoning or Endangering a Child (what amounts to “neglect” in Texas parlance) and was, as of press time, still held on the second-degree felony with a cash bond set at $50,000.
Texas embraces the Second Amendment
While the gun debate is raging in a state that embraces their Second Amendment, and local media, with an obviously liberal slant, is encouraging it, the Bowman family is enduring more than their share of heartache.
Matt Bowman’s widow, Lyndi Bowman in Harrisburg, lost her grandmother, Lynda Hull, in the Leap Day Tornado that devastated a portion of the city on February 29, 2012. When Matt Bowman took his own life, Danny and Mary Bowman lost their son; Nona Bowman lost her brother; Shirley Crump lost her grandson. The accident that took the life of the 9-year-old Daniel Wiley is a blow that they can hardly afford to bear; that Danny Bowman is in jail for something that literally was an accident is the insult to the injury. That Illinois is so ridiculously restrictive with gun laws, whereas just four decades ago boys the ages of these two would already have been allowed to go hunting together without adult supervision, adds another dimension of pain to the family, and underscores the type of accidents that can occur when opportunities don’t exist to teach youngsters gun respect and safety.
But worst of all, Harrisburg grade schools will have one less student this year, an absence that no one can fill, and which no amount of gun control debate, charging of crime or casting of blame can fix.