A former college football offensive lineman had his leg amputated after a freak hunting accident caused by a dog who jumped on a shotgun during…
A former college football offensive lineman had his leg amputated after a freak hunting accident caused by a dog who jumped on a shotgun during a hunting excursion last month.
Matt Branch, an offensive lineman for Louisiana State University from 2008 to 2011, was hunting for deer and ducks in Mississippi with several friends on Dec. 28 when the annual jaunt near Eagle Lake took a sudden and tragic turn, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reports .
“It was a normal morning,” Branch’s friend Micah Heckford told the newspaper. “We got up, made coffee and talked about our game plan. Everybody was pumped up. We rode the levee the day before and there were a ton of ducks. We were excited.”
That excitement turned to fear and confusion in an instant when a dog who accompanied Branch’s crew — a Labrador retriever named Tito, owned by Branch’s cousin — hopped into the bed of a Polaris Ranger utility vehicle and stepped on the safety of Branch’s shotgun, which fired at him from roughly 4 feet away.
