Austin Hedrick, a 16-year-old from Catawba, North Carolina, died on October 17, 2014, after a rifle in a pickup truck discharged and struck him in the head while he sat in the passenger seat. He was a member of Faith Baptist Church in Newton and a student at Bunker Hill High School. The shooting occurred late at night and no one else in the truck was injured.

Authorities reported the rifle had been in the truck all day and described the shooting as under investigation; as of the latest update authorities had not filed any charges. Austin was the third Bunker Hill High School student to die in October 2014, following two classmates killed in a single-vehicle wreck earlier that month. Classmates and community members remembered him as someone who could make everyone laugh, and the school community showed support by wearing camouflage in his memory.

What details about the rifle’s storage or handling that night might help clarify how the discharge happened? If anyone has information about the vehicle, the rifle’s presence earlier that day, or what happened that night, please come forward.