Ugh.

A Fresno County Sheriff’s deputy died Monday afternoon after he was accidentally shot, the sheriff’s office said.

Authorities said a gun accidentally went off at a business park near Clinton and Winery Avenues around 3:45 p.m., wounding the deputy. The typically quiet business park turned solemn as deputies swarmed the scene, trying to piece together a shooting that killed one of their own.

After pulling up to a building in east-central Fresno, authorities learned a deputy had been shot when a gun accidentally discharged. The victim was rushed to Community Regional Medical Center and died shortly after.

Few things are more frustrating to me than negligent discharge deaths, and especially the sort of shooting we appear to have here. While details have been kept deliberately vague, the general scenario fits the profile of an officer fiddling with his or her gun, then having a negligent discharge into the lower abdomen (below the body armor) to mid-thigh area and striking an artery.

I’m not sure if the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department equips their officers with individual patrol officer kits (IPOKs) designed to stop hemorrhages, but even if they do, there’s no guarantee that the wound was in an area where the officer would have been able to control the bleeding.

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It’s worth mentioning that our friends at Snakehound Machine recently launched Project Stimpack in an effort to help equip first responders with a proven tourniquet kit, which may be able to help in similar situations, for when officers respond to a crash or shooting, or other incidents where hemorrhaging in the extremities is a threat to sustaining life.

The single most important piece of medical gear I carry on a daily basis is a SOFTT-Wide tourniquet in a PHLster FlatPack tourniquet carrier.

Unfortunately, our first responders don’t always have the luxury of being issued great gear. They are issued what is cheapest, or what they’re willing to spend their (often meager) salaries upon.

As a result, many don’t have tourniquets on them at all, much less carried in a way that is both comfortable and easily accessible.

That isn’t sitting well with our friends at Snakehound Machine, so they’ve decided to launch Project Stimpack to better equip first responders to save lives.

Project Stimpack is our way of trying to do good. For every $30 we raise, we provide one SOF®TT-Wide tourniquet, one Flatpack® Tourniquet Carrier, and mail them to an individual or unit somewhere who needs them. Active Military, Law Enforcement, Firemen, and Emergency Medical Technicians are often under supplied or under funded and if provided the best equipment on the market, perhaps more lives will be saved.

This is not a charity. This is just some guys trying to use the resources they have been given to do some good in the world. Your donations won’t get you a tax write-off, they WILL provide life saving equipment to people who need them.

While searching out the perfect charity, we quickly realized that no perfect charity exists. Every program has overhead, salaries, fund-raising, and the like. I don’t know about you but I get real pissed off thinking that money I’ve given to help people gets used to buy vacation homes, BMWs, and skydiving trips.

Any donation is appreciated, but we also need nominations. If you know of Rescue Workers, Emergency Personnel, Law Enforcement Officers, or Military Servicemen and Women who can benefit from Project Stimpack please let us know. You can put their information in the comment field on our website, or email [email protected].

If you or your business would like to be involved in Project Stimpack please email us, we would like to hear from you.

Please note that Project Stimpack is looking for both donors and agencies/individual first responders to donate to.

11/2 Update: The original vague reporting that made it sound like the Fresno officer negligently discharged a round into himself was wrong. What actually happened was much worse.

 A 20-year veteran sheriff’s deputy in Central California was killed by a bullet in the chest from a colleague’s gun in what officials said Tuesday appeared to be “a tragic accidental shooting.”

Deputy Sgt. Rod Lucas was having a conversation with a detective about how to carry their backup weapons when the shot was fired on Monday, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said. The incident occurred at a sheriff’s office near the Fresno Yosemite International Airport.

Mims said Lucas, 46, and the detective were in a room with two other colleagues and there was no dispute, just a conversation about weapons safety.

“The detective had his weapon out. During this discussion, the detective’s weapon discharged,” the sheriff said. “Sgt. Lucas was struck by the bullet in his chest, and he dropped to the ground.”

Lucas was immediately given CPR and rushed to Community Regional Medical Center, where he died.

Mims did not disclose the type of firearm involved in the incident, calling it “an improved secondary weapon for the detective.” She said all witnesses have been interviewed except for the detective, who was not identified, due to his mental state which she described as extremely upset.