Fatal Shooting in Youth’s Home Parallels ’86 Tragedy : Deaths: A teen-ager dies when a handgun belonging to his friend’s parents goes off. Four years ago, a boy was killed by a shotgun blast in the same room.

The first time, when a 13-year-old boy killed a friend as they played with a shotgun, police called it a tragic accident.

Four years later, at the same hour in the same room in his Anaheim Hills home, the boy, now 17, allegedly fired his parents’ .38-caliber handgun at a another friend and classmate, who died Friday.

The bizarre parallels between the two shootings prompted Anaheim police Friday to reopen their investigation into the 1986 shooting and left three sets of parents grappling with the unthinkable.

“I don’t believe it was an accident,” said Richard Wiedepuhl, 57, after his son Christian, 17, died of a single gunshot wound to the head he suffered Thursday afternoon. “This was a cold-blooded killing,” he said.

Police declined to identify the boy who allegedly fired the gun. He has not been charged and was released to the custody of his parents. In both cases, he called police to report the shooting, describing each as accidental.

“We are going to investigate fully,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Chet Barry said. “We are not through with this by a long shot.”

In September, 1986, 13-year-old Jeffrey A. Bush died of a shotgun wound to the head while playing with the same boy in the two-story, stucco house in an upper-middle-class section of affluent Anaheim Hills. His father, Dale Bush, 46, said Friday he is still convinced that Jeffrey’s death was an accident.

Bush said he did not want a new investigation, because he could not bear to relive his son’s death.

“For my own mental health, I would prefer that they would just forget about it,” Bush said.

Both fathers said they blamed the boy’s parents, who declined to comment, for having allowed him access to their firearms, not once but twice.

“It’s inexcusable,” Bush said.

Officials at Canyon High School, where Christian Wiedepuhl and his friend were students, said the boy who fired the gun attended some special-needs classes. They declined to elaborate.

Neighbors and classmates, however, described him as a troubled youth who usually wore military-style clothes and talked about joining the Army after high school. Several said they were afraid of him.

“I know there have been a lot of discipline problems with him,” said a longtime neighbor, Bobbye Nickell. “We’ve caught him peeping into our windows.”

Other neighbors also said they had seen the boy looking into windows.

“Some people thought he was strange, but once you got to know him, he really wasn’t,” said Justin Young, 16, who had been the boy’s wrestling partner since seventh grade. “After that last thing that happened, I didn’t think it could happen again.”

Classmates said both the boy and Christian Wiedepuhl were interested in guns. The fascination troubled 15-year-old Eric Baldar.

“I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t stop liking guns after that (Bush’s death),” Baldar said.

The two youths had recently become friends and were working on a school project together, the victim’s father said. Police say that on Thursday afternoon, the boy invited Wiedepuhl into an upstairs office of his parents’ home and pulled out his parents’ .38-caliber handgun. While the two were examining the loaded weapon, it discharged, hitting Wiedepuhl above the right eye, police said.

The Orange County coroner sealed the records of Bush’s death at the request of police. Dale Bush said his son was holding a rifle and the Anaheim Hills boy was holding a shotgun. Three pellets from the shotgun missed Jeffrey but ricocheted off the rifle and struck him in the head, Bush said.

Christian Wiedepuhl was a tall, reedy boy with reddish-blond hair who had little interest in school but a knack for mechanics, his father and classmates said. Friends said he was shy and sometimes bullied by others.

“Anybody who owns (firearms) should keep them secured,” Wiedepuhl said. “No other child should be killed by the carelessness of the parents, and they were careless.

“My son died needlessly.”

Times staff writers Matt Lait, Tony Marcano and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this story.