\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe two children injured in Friday\u2019s accidental shooting by an off-duty deputy are home from the hospital, the Orange County Sheriff\u2019s Office said late Monday afternoon.OCSO identified the deputy under investigation as Austin Ritchey. He\u2019s worked at the sheriff\u2019s office since April 2024. “If you assume the responsibility of firearm ownership, you should know how to safely clean that gun, unload the gun, load it,\u201d said Carey Baker, the owner of A.W. Peterson Gun Shop in Mount Dora. Baker is also a firearms instructor. \u201cMistakes still happen, and so it requires an extra amount of vigilance, and it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a fire law enforcement officer or not,” he said.Baker showed WESH 2 the proper protocols for how to safely clean a handgun. “So, you pull the magazine out,\u201d Baker said. \u201cCheck this chamber. Check it multiple times. You can’t check it too many times. I tell people, keep checking and just make sure no rounds anywhere.”According to OCSO, Ritchey was off-duty and cleaning his personal firearm early Friday afternoon when it discharged a single round, injuring two of his children.One child had a gunshot wound, and the other was injured from shrapnel, OCSO said. Criminal defense attorney Jose Rivas said it’s possible the deputy could face a misdemeanor criminal charge.”Based on what we’re hearing from the facts, it could be more culpable negligence,\u201d Rivas said. \u201cIs it just more than just a mere accident? He could have taken better steps to secure that this wouldn’t have happened.”Rivas said investigators will want to answer the following questions. “Did he point it while he was cleaning it?\u201d Rivas said. \u201cDid he pull the trigger while making sure that it was unloaded, or did he ignore any other basic firearm safety procedures?”\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The two children injured in Friday\u2019s accidental shooting by an off-duty deputy are home from the hospital, the Orange County Sheriff\u2019s Office said late Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
OCSO identified the deputy under investigation as Austin Ritchey. He\u2019s worked at the sheriff\u2019s office since April 2024. <\/p>\n
“If you assume the responsibility of firearm ownership, you should know how to safely clean that gun, unload the gun, load it,\u201d said Carey Baker, the owner of A.W. Peterson Gun Shop in Mount Dora. <\/p>\n
Baker is also a firearms instructor. <\/p>\n
\u201cMistakes still happen, and so it requires an extra amount of vigilance, and it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a fire law enforcement officer or not,” he said.<\/p>\n
Baker showed WESH 2 the proper protocols for how to safely clean a handgun. <\/p>\n
“So, you pull the magazine out,\u201d Baker said. \u201cCheck this chamber. Check it multiple times. You can’t check it too many times. I tell people, keep checking and just make sure no rounds anywhere.”<\/p>\n
According to OCSO, Ritchey was off-duty and cleaning his personal firearm early Friday afternoon when it discharged a single round, injuring two of his children.<\/p>\n
One child had a gunshot wound, and the other was injured from shrapnel, OCSO said. <\/p>\n
Criminal defense attorney Jose Rivas said it’s possible the deputy could face a misdemeanor criminal charge.<\/p>\n
“Based on what we’re hearing from the facts, it could be more culpable negligence,\u201d Rivas said. \u201cIs it just more than just a mere accident? He could have taken better steps to secure that this wouldn’t have happened.”<\/p>\n
Rivas said investigators will want to answer the following questions. <\/p>\n
“Did he point it while he was cleaning it?\u201d Rivas said. \u201cDid he pull the trigger while making sure that it was unloaded, or did he ignore any other basic firearm safety procedures?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two children injured in Friday\u2019s accidental shooting by an off-duty deputy are home from the hospital, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[42818,139316,125599,2353,89135,8597,2230,667,114983,11875,138498,660,15014,139,141,140,139317,35259,2631],"class_list":["post-338961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-accidental-shooting","tag-austin-ritchey","tag-carey-baker","tag-child","tag-fields","tag-friday","tag-gun","tag-investigation","tag-late-monday-afternoon","tag-ocso","tag-off-duty-deputy","tag-office","tag-orange-county-deputy","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-rivas","tag-round","tag-sheriff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}