Heart Donated : Friends Mourn Boy Killed by Shotgun Shell

Grief-stricken friends recalled Sunday that Jeffrey Allen Bush, 13, had been full of life and energy.

Therefore, they said, it seemed fitting that the boy’s heart apparently has saved the life of someone else.

“Jeffrey’s heart was transplanted late Saturday night into a 30-year-old woman who has two small children and who had no chance to live without a heart transplant,” said a neighbor, Kent Cassel, of the 6500 block of Via Estrada in Anaheim Hills. “The operation was at Stanford University, and the woman is recovering, from what we’ve been told.”

Cassel, his voice breaking, recalled the accidental shotgun-shell death of the boy who lived next door. Although Cassel is an adult, Jeffrey treated him as a pal, Cassel said. “He was my buddy,” he added. “And he was the nicest little boy. His father said he was the best boy in the neighborhood. Well, that’s an understatement.”

Anaheim police said the accident occurred about 4 p.m. Friday in the home of another 13-year-old boy whom Jeffrey was visiting in the 100 block of North Wade Circle in Anaheim. Details were still unclear, but the shooting or shotgun-shell explosion was accidental, police said. The other boy reportedly was not hurt.

The boys apparently were playing with a shotgun shell, Cassel said. It exploded, and three pellets struck Jeffrey in the head. The boy was taken to Western Medical Center in Anaheim, but he was pronounced brain-dead about 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

His parents, Dale and Brenda Bush, decided to donate his organs, including his heart. The body, on a life-support system, was flown Saturday afternoon to Stanford University Medical Center, and the successful heart operation took place shortly afterward, Cassel said.

A spokeswoman at the medical center said Sunday night that the woman, whose identity has not been made public, is in critical condition.

Terry Gordon Gamble, a nursing supervisor at the medical center, said: “Actually, the patient who received the heart isn’t doing very well at this point. She’s having some kidney problems mainly.” Gamble said the woman patient’s own heart had become enlarged from a complication during a recent pregnancy.

The Associated Press said the heart recipient is from Antioch, in Northern California, and that she had delivered a healthy baby at the end of her pregnancy. Jeffrey had just entered the seventh grade at El Rancho Junior High, Cassel said. He was a bright, happy child who loved mechanical things and sports. He had played soccer and baseball, Cassel said.

“He was a very inquisitive child, one who constantly liked to see how things work. He was mechanically gifted. He even made a fishing reel that mechanically would wind itself up.

“He was just one of the best-behaved boys I’ve ever met. I don’t know of anything bad he ever did, and I live next door, so I’d know.”

Cassel said he didn’t know where the boys got the shotgun shell. He said the Bush family doesn’t own a gun. “They are grand people,” he said of the father and mother. “They have no animosity about this.”

In addition to his father and mother, Jeffrey is survived by a brother, Brian, 10; his paternal grandparents, Al and Jessie Bush of Arcadia, and his maternal grandmother, Betty Massingale of Roswell, N.M.

Funeral arrangements are pending.