Boy recounts to police how he shot friend with father's gun

By The Associated Press
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 8, 1996

PHOENIX - It was when his friend rolled over, closed his eyes and stopped moving that Jeremy Bach says he propped the 13-year-old's body inside a trash container and wheeled it outside.

Jeremy told police he accidentally shot Brad Hansen in the chest on Nov. 10 while they were playing with two guns belonging to Jeremy's father, who was at work at the time.

Police released a transcript of the Feb. 17 interview on Friday.

Earlier in the week, Phoenix police started picking through tons of compacted refuse at a huge city landfill, looking for Brad's body.

Jeremy, also 13, was charged with second-degree murder and has been in custody since late February. A court hearing to determine whether he'll be tried as an adult is scheduled for today.

If convicted as an adult, he could be sentenced to up to 22 years in prison.

Police have said they believe the boys quarreled over a girl. Jeremy had dated her for about a year and had burned one of her initials into one of his wrists.

Brad's disappearance initially was treated as a missing person case. Jeremy was among those interviewed by police.

He was interviewed again on Feb. 17 in Las Vegas, where he had moved to live with his mother, after investigators found traces of human blood on the trash container at his father's home in Phoenix.

According to the transcript, Jeremy told police he and Brad unloaded the two pistols, played with them, then reloaded them and started to put them away.

Something bumped the one he was carrying and it fired, he said. He said he didn't realize Brad had been hit until he saw saliva bubbling from his mouth.

''I turned him over, and there was a big old puddle of blood under him,'' Jeremy told police. ''And I, like, panicked.''

''I was, like, pushing on his chest, but he wouldn't do nothing. I got blood all over my hands and clothes and everything,'' he said.

''I, like, pulled him up. He, like, fell down. Pulled him up again. He fell down. He did not get up.''

Then, he said, he waited. ''I didn't do nothing until he wasn't moving no more. He wasn't moving his hands or feet or nothing. ... He just stopped. And he ... he turned over and closed his eyes.''

He said he placed Brad's body in a sitting position in a 90-gallon trash container, wheeled him outside and left the lid open for an hour.

''I thought he was gonna get out and say, 'I was playing with you,' or something,'' Jeremy said, according to the transcript. ''Then I decided he ain't gonna get out, so I just closed it.''

The large trash containers are emptied automatically by city trucks, which then compact the contents for delivery to the landfill.

Officers found blood stains determined to be Brad's in the kitchen and on a trash container at the house where Jeremy had been living with his father. They also seized two handguns, one of them they believe was used to kill Brad.

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