Gun owner charged with endangerment

A 57-year-old Salt Lake man was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with reckless endangerment, a class A misdemeanor, after a gun accidentally went off and a bullet struck a child through his diaper.

The boy's father heard a loud "boom" on July 29, 2003, and the boy started crying and complaining of pain. The father then noticed a hole in his son's diaper. Doctors later removed a bullet from the boy's buttocks, according to charging documents.

A man in the apartment below them had been preparing his lever-action rifle for hunting season in October and placed four or five rounds in the magazine. He "pushed down" on the bullets and closed the bolt, so as not to chamber a round, then pulled the trigger on what he thought was an empty chamber. But the gun went off, the charges state.

The man neglected to check on the condition of the people upstairs after the shot was fired, the charges state.