On the Fourth of July weekend in 1927, in Celoron, a tiny village near Jamestown, New York, an eight year old boy named Warner Erickson was playing with his neighbors when his mother called him to come home.

The trouble was, the children were target shooting with a .22-caliber rifle that Fred Hunt had given his twelve year old grandson for his birthday. When Warner jumped up to run home, he jumped right into the line of fire of Joanna Ottinger, an out of town visitor who was holding the gun, and when she pressed the trigger, the gun discharged, and the bullet severed Warner’s spinal cord.

The initial news reports were a bit vague on the details.

The Buffalo News, however, reported his condition as serious.

By September his condition was being reported as paralyzed from the waist down. He would never walk again.

The following May Warner’s parents won a civil suit against Fred Hunt for negligence in not supervising the children who were using the rifle; $2000 for Warner and another $2000 for his father.

Except Fred Hunt couldn’t pay the $4000, so he was sent to jail. Eventually he was adjudged bankrupt and released on bail, and he ended up losing his home.

In 1932 Warner Erickson died from the bullet wound.

You may be wondering why I’m writing about this case after all these years.

Is it to demonstrate that even a century ago Americans were much too casual in how they handled guns?

Well, yes, but there’s another reason.

You see, Fred Hunt’s grandson, the twelve year old to whom he gave the .22-caliber rifle, was Fred Ball.

And Fred Ball had an older sister who at that time was away in New York City attending the Robert Minton–John Murray Anderson School of Drama. His sister Lucille was fifteen at the time and did not do well, so her teachers suggested she return home.

Except Lucille Ball soon found she no longer had a home in Celoron.

She was very unlucky with her parents and grandparents. When she was three, her father ate unpasteurized ice cream and died.

Needless to say, Lucille and brother Fred Ball had very difficult childhoods.

But at least they made it through childhood. Unlike Warner Erickson.