One of the primary rules of shooting is to be sure of your target (what you’re shooting at) and beyond.  It’s so you KNOW what it is that you’re about to send hot lead into!

Apparently someone missed their “Firearms Training 101”.

In a bizarre story coming out of Africa, a young female member of the Youth Corps was shot by the Headmaster of the Mbube Comprehensive Secondary School.  He has since been arrested, although it remains to be seen what, if any punishment he will receive for almost killing one of his charges.

The school is in a part of the world that doesn’t have some of the things we North American’s take so much for granted.  I’m referring here to indoor toilets.  Or toilets at all, for that matter.

… the corps member was said to have shared a common apartment without toilet facilities. Information has it that when she needed to answer a call of nature in the early hours of the fateful day, she had gone to a nearby bush behind the quarters.

The nasty shooting came to my attention in an article titled “Accidental Discharge: Headmaster shoots corps member”.

Apparently unaware of someone’s presence behind their compound in the bush, the landlord’s son sighted the movement of cassava stems and alerted his father who allegedly mistook the object for an antelope.
Consequently, the headmaster, who was angry about the destruction of his economic crops by animals, made for his double barrel gun and allegedly fired at the girl’s back at close range.

The thing is, there was NOTHING accidentally about the almost-murder of 26-year-old Christiana Enechejo Paul at all.

There was, however, a HUGE amount of negligence involved.

The story reports that the headmaster was angry about antelope eating his crops, which is why he grabbed his gun and shot at the movement in the bushes.  He wanted to teach that nasty antelope a lesson.

Only it wasn’t an antelope, but a human being.

And as the report noted…

… the headmaster realized too late that his target was actually a human being rather than an animal.

It’s such a simple thing, really.  Being sure of your target BEFORE you shoot, that is.  Taking that few extra seconds to be absolutely sure of what it is you’re shooting at can save yourself a lot of grief, not to mention your poor victim, as in the case of poor Miss Christiana Paul.

I can only hope and pray she survives the stupidity of the unnamed Headmaster.  I also hope and pray he will be held accountable for his incredible stupidity in failing to follow one of shooting’s most basic rules.