The Butler County coroner has ruled that the shooting was an accident. The Dayton Daily News reports:

“It was a accidental, self-inflicted gunshot,” Debbie Lacey, coroner’s investigator, said of the shooting of Zachariah Nesbitt at his home in the 900 block of Gordon Smith Boulevard Saturday night.

The father called 911 Saturday night distraught after his son took a gun from the closet of the family home and pulled the trigger. The gun was loaded. A bullet entered the boy's abdomen and from there into the lung. A mother's sobs rang out as she tried to keep his heart pumping with CPR. WKRC-TV reports on that call:

The man making the 911 call says, "He's bleeding in the abdomen." When the dispatcher asks if he has anything to put on the wound, the man replies, "I don't know. They've gone outside." Neighbors say the boy's mother carried him outside and performed CPR until paramedics arrived.

A family is now shattered. Neighbours are in shock. Playmates don't understand. The child's death was preventable. A loaded gun in a home with children is never safe. WLWT reports on the police's advice on guns in the home:

"Take the bullets out," said Officer Rick Burkhardt, of Hamilton police. "You can put them in if you ever need to, so then it's two steps, another step for a kid if he finds a gun and bullets aren't there. There's nothing that could happen."