An 11-year-old boy faces homicide charges after allegedly shooting his father to death, even though the gun he used was locked in a safe, authorities in Pennsylvania said.
Douglas Dietz, 42, was killed in the early morning hours of Jan. 13 while he and his wife were in bed, according to a criminal complaint. Pennsylvania State Police responded to a report about 3:20 a.m. and found Dietz suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. A revolver was found in a closet connected to the bedroom of Dietz’s 11-year-old son.
His wife, Jillian Dietz, told police she believed her son, who turned 11 that day, shot her husband while they slept. The boy later told investigators the gun he used was locked in a safe.
“I killed daddy,” the boy said in the presence of police, according to the complaint.
The child, who USA TODAY is not naming because he is a minor, has been charged with one count of criminal homicide, court records show. An attorney representing him did not return calls from USA TODAY, and the Perry County District Attorney’s Office said it would not comment on the case. The boy was denied bail, records show.
Cases in which children come into contact with guns and cause injury or death often renew calls for safe gun storage, but the Dietz case is a reminder that keeping guns locked behind a key may not be enough. Cass Crifasi, co-director of the Center for Solutions to Gun Violence at Johns Hopkins University, said parents might be surprised to learn that their children know where guns are stored and may even know where keys are hidden.
“One very important thing is if your gun is locked up – which it should be – make sure those keys are not easily accessible,” Crifasi said. “Kids are very curious. They know where the cookies are hidden, where the Christmas presents are hidden.”
Photo taken in September 2024 at the free gun lock at AnMed Health Campus in Anderson, South Carolina. Anderson County Kids Safe was founded in 1999 to raise awareness and educate parents and caregivers to ensure firearms are stored safely and prevent accidental injury or death.
How an 11-year-old got his hands on a locked gun
Jillian Dietz told police she and her husband went to bed just after midnight on Jan. 13 when they wished their son a happy 11th birthday. She was awakened by a loud bang and smelled something that reminded her of fireworks, the complaint states.
Jillian Dietz said she nudged her husband to wake him, but he didn’t move. She heard what she thought was water dripping. She told police that when she turned on the light, she realized the sound was actually blood. Jillian Dietz said her son entered the room through a closet connecting the two bedrooms and yelled things like “Daddy’s dead.”
The boy later told her, “I killed my father and I hate myself,” she told investigators during an interview, the complaint said.
Jillian Dietz attempted CPR on her husband and both she and her father called 911, the complaint states.
More: Study finds alarming proportion of homes with guns unlocked and loaded, endangering children
Jillian Dietz told investigators that the home’s firearms were stored in a gun safe across from her bed and in a smaller safe elsewhere in the bedroom. She said she didn’t know where the keys were, according to the complaint. Her son was adopted in 2018, she said.
The boy, who suffered a cut on his lip and a contusion above his eye, told police he had a fun day with his parents but became angry when his father told him it was time to go to bed, the complaint said. He said he was looking for a Nintendo game that had been taken earlier and found the key to the safe, which he opened because he thought the game might be inside, according to the complaint.
An ad for a public awareness campaign on a bus in Los Angeles shows a young boy holding a handgun as if it were a toy with the words “Never let your gun fall into the wrong hands.” The ad was shot on a bus on January 22, 2016.
The boy “admitted to removing the gun from the safe, loading it, and walking to his father’s bedside. He proceeded to pull back the hammer and shoot his father,” the lawsuit states.
When asked what he thought would happen when he shot his father, the boy told investigators he was angry and didn’t think about it, the complaint said.
Storing guns safely can prevent tragedy
According to Everytown research, about once a day in the United States, children get their hands on a loaded gun and unintentionally shoot themselves or others. Homicides committed by children have also increased in recent years, jumping from 315 in 2016 to 521 in 2022, according to a report from the Criminal Justice Commission.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other advocacy groups say safe storage laws, which require guns to be stored locked, unloaded and separated from ammunition, and child exposure prevention laws, which penalize adults who allow children access to firearms, can help protect children from gun violence. Pennsylvania currently has no such law, according to Everytown and the Giffords Law Center.
A 2024 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than a quarter of households with loaded firearms had at least one unlocked gun in at least 25% of the homes. Unlocked firearms have led to tragedy in recent years, including last February when a 4-year-old shot himself with a gun he found in his family’s car and a 5-year-old girl was left in critical condition after her 3-year-old brother shot her with an unlocked gun.
Even though the Dietz’s gun was apparently locked in a safe and unloaded, that wasn’t enough to stop the child from getting one.
Crifasi said secure storage practices can be “extremely effective” in reducing gun violence involving children, but locking guns won’t help if the keys are easily accessible. A 2025 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that even if parents say they keep all guns locked and unloaded, more than one-third of teens say they have access to and load them. Crifasi said a solution to the problem might be to use safes with biometric locks and make sure to discuss gun safety with children at home.
“If we secure our firearms and then take the time to make those keys unavailable to secure access, then that’s just a tragedy that doesn’t have to happen,” Crifasi said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 11-year-old shot father with gun in safe, police say