Lydell Hartford Jr., a 20-year-old freshman linebacker at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, was accidentally shot to death outside his home in Louisiana by a 16-year-old friend who was playing with a gun he thought was unloaded, according to the Post Crescent.
The teenager squeezed the trigger several times and Hartford was killed by a gunshot wound to the neck.
The .38-caliber gun was owned by Hartford’s mother. Hartford and the teenager, whose name is not being released, found the gun in a car that was parked in the family’s driveway, according to a release on the University’s website.