Man Fatally Shoots Himself While Taking Selfies

43-year-old from Washington state had been posing with girlfriend
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 3, 2016 12:27 PM CST
Man Fatally Shoots Himself While Taking Selfies
Stock photo of phone, which seemed more tasteful than one of a gun.   (Shutterstock)

A day spent posing for selfies with his girlfriend and a gun turned out to be fatal for a man in Washington state. The Skagit Valley Herald reports the unnamed man accidentally shot himself in the face Sunday while taking a photo. The girlfriend of the 43-year-old from Concrete says they had been snapping photos with the gun throughout the day; her beau reportedly removed the bullets before posing, then returned them to the gun between photos, per the Skagit County Sheriff's Office chief of patrol.

The man apparently thought the gun was unloaded during his last picture, but there was one bullet in the chamber, causing what police are so far calling his accidental death. And he's far from alone in meeting this kind of demise: Citing a Priceonomics study published at the end of January, CBS News reports there have been 49 selfie-related deaths since 2014—four of them attributed to guns. Nearly 30 people died a selfie-linked death in 2015 alone, many of them in India and Russia. (More selfie stories.)

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