Father’s Tragic Shot Kills His Only Son : Accident: Santa Ana man finds old-style musket in trash. While checking it out, it fires, and a 5-month-old child dies.

Jorge Luis Lizarraga was on his regular rounds as a trash collector in Newport Beach on Tuesday when he found what looked like an old-style musket, the kind soldiers used in the Revolutionary War. He wasn’t even sure if it was real, relatives say.

But the gun proved all too real. A few hours later, as the 24-year-old Lizarraga was apparently trying to clean or test the weapon, it fired, sending a fatal bullet into the head of his only child, 5-month-old Alexis Fernando.

Police on Wednesday tried to sort through what they said appeared to be an accident. Grieving relatives did not know where to begin as they gathered at the Lizarragas’ apartment on Chestnut Avenue.

“We think it was the devil’s work--there’s no other way to explain it,” Alfred Ortega, a cousin, said outside the apartment.

Lizarraga and his wife, Angie, were “devastated” by the events of the previous night and did not want to speak with reporters, Ortega said.

“This was their pride, a joyful child. They’d have done anything for him,” he said.

When Lizarraga brought the musket home from work, he “thought it was a fake,” the cousin said. “He even opened it up and looked inside (for bullets) but there was nothing there. He tried firing it to see if there was anything in it but there wasn’t--until the last time.”

Police and relatives said a single bullet struck the infant, who was in the arms of his mother across the room. He was flown by helicopter to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he was pronounced dead about 8:15 p.m., soon after arrival.

Relatives from around the area rushed to the family’s apartment to help console mother and father upon their return from the hospital.

Santa Ana police, continuing their investigation on Wednesday, said they were considering possible criminal charges against Lizarraga in connection with the death of his son. A report is to be forwarded to the district attorney’s office for review.

“We’re suspecting there was some negligence on the part of the father, and we’re investigating that,” said police spokesman Lt. Robert Helton. “We’ll have to see if there are any grounds for charges.

“There’s obviously nothing to indicate this was intentional, so I imagine we could be looking at something like manslaughter” if authorities decide to pursue charges in the case, Helton said. Neither he nor county prosecutors would comment on the likelihood of that happening.

Helton added that the weapon was a working replica of an antique cap-and-ball musket. But Lizarraga may not have known that.

“We’re not even sure he realized what he had, how it operates off a flint and that type of thing, or even whether he knew this was a real gun in his hand or a toy or what,” Helton said. “It’s really a sad situation.”