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Evanston police say a 31-year-old man accidentally killed himself Sunday night when he put a shotgun he thought was unloaded to his head and pulled the trigger.

Police Cmdr. Diane Davis says officer were called to an apartment in the 800 block of Howard Street about 9:45 p.m. responding to a phone call from a resident of the apartment who witnessed the incident.

Davis says officers found the victim, identified as Eric Zyzanski, on the floor with a shotgun wound to his head and the shotgun lying beside him.

Evanston Fire Department paramedics transported the victim to St. Francis Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Davis says witnesses told police the victim was in his apartment with several friends when he retrieved his shotgun and began showing it off.

His friends became alarmed and told him to put it away, Davis said, but after ejecting two or three rounds from the gun, he held the shotgun to his cheek, told his friends it was empty and pulled the trigger.

Davis says detectives interviewed the friends that were in the apartment, who gave consistent accounts of what had happened. Evidence technicians processed the scene and determined that the body and the evidence corroborated the witnesses’ accounts.

Bill Smith is the editor and publisher of Evanston Now.

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1 Comment

  1. Darwin Award

    The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions circa 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own (unnecessarily foolish) actions.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

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