2 Pals, 2 Deaths: Parents Left to Wonder

The first time the 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 Thursday, the boy, now 17, fired his parents’ .38-caliber pistol and killed another classmate.

The parallels between the two shootings left three sets of parents grappling with the unthinkable Friday.

“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 that he suffered Thursday evening.

“This was a cold-blooded killing,” he said.

Police declined to identify the boy, who 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. Police said Friday that they have reopened their investigation into the 1986 shooting, which had been ruled an accident.

“We are going to investigate fully,” said Anaheim Police Sgt. Chet Barry. “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 for having allowed him access to their firearms--not once but twice.

“It’s inexcusable,” Bush said. The boy’s parents declined to comment.

Officials at Canyon High School, where both youths were students, said the boy attended some special-needs classes, but they declined to elaborate.

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

“He’s not too mentally balanced,” said Bobbye Nickell, a longtime neighbor. “I know there have been a lot of discipline problems with him. 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,” Baldar said. “I don’t think he meant to do it, but after picking up a gun and killing someone, I can’t believe it could happen twice.”

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

The Orange County coroner sealed the records of the Bush death at the request of police. The victim’s father, however, said that his son had been holding a rifle, and the Anaheim Hills boy was holding a 12-gauge shotgun. The shotgun discharged and the blast missed Jeffrey, but three pellets ricocheted off the rifle and struck him in the head, Bush said.

Jeffrey had just entered the seventh grade at El Rancho Junior High. He was described as a bright, happy child who played soccer and baseball and loved mechanical things.

In an unhappy coda to the shooting, Jeffrey’s heart was transplanted into a 30-year-old woman whose heart had become dangerously enlarged during a pregnancy. Despite the transplant, the woman died.

Christian Wiedepuhl also loved mechanical things. He was a tall, reedy boy with reddish-blond hair who had little interest in school but had a knack for machinery, his father and classmates said.

Friends said Christian was shy, and sometimes was bullied by others.

“People used to pick on him, and I think a lot of people really feel bad now,” said Heather Engberg, 15.

Richard Wiedepuhl said his son loved lobster and prime rib and his blue 1979 Fiat Spyder, which he worked on constantly. Christian was also rebuilding a blue Volkswagen.

Wiedepuhl said he had immigrated from Germany and had planned to take the family back for a vacation this summer. He said he had planned to rent a Porsche, put his son behind the wheel and “let him drive fast.”

Wiedepuhl said he, too, would like to donate his son’s organs but was barred by the coroner from doing so.

“That very much upset me,” Wiedepuhl said. “ . . . What kind of a law is that? I lost a son. At least somebody could have been helped with a kidney or something, but no.”

Police said an autopsy on Christian had shed no light on the nature of the shooting. They declined to specify how the Anaheim Hills boy had obtained the loaded gun.

“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,” he said.

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

PARENTS MOURN--Two fathers who lost sons in eerily similar incidents share a common grief. A21