- A man entering a truck on Saturday was shot by a dog who stepped on his rifle in the back seat.
- The man was hit in the back and died at the scene, officials say.
A Kansas man on a hunting trip was accidentally shot and killed by a dog after the pet stepped on the rifle in the back of a car, according to Sumner County Sheriff's Office.
Wichita resident Joseph Austin Smith, 30, died on the scene Saturday morning minutes after emergency services arrived and tried CPR and other life-saving measures on him, according to a press statement from the Sumner County Sheriff's Office obtained by Insider.
Smith entered the passenger seat of a pickup truck that had hunting gear, a loaded rifle, and a dog in the back, according to the Sheriff's office. It was then that the dog, who belonged to the owner of the truck, "stepped on the rifle causing the weapon to discharge," the statement said.
The shooting occurred north of the city of Gueda Springs, on the 1600 Block of East 80th Street South. The driver was unharmed, according to NBC.
This is not the first time a dog accidentally triggered a gun and killed or wounded a human in a vehicle.
A 2015 Washington Post analysis of 10 dog shootings between 2004 and 2015 found that half of the incidents occurred in during a hunting accident, and 40% occurred in a vehicle.
In Russia, a similar accident occurred involving a man and his dog on a hunting trip in 2018. After being released from the back of a pickup truck, the dog's paw caught onto the trigger of a gun aimed at its owner's stomach.
In 2019, an Oklahoma woman was shot in the thigh by her Labrador retriever while she was driving in her pickup truck.
And in November, a Turkish man was shot and killed while putting his dog into his car. The dogs paw had also triggered the shotgun.