Parents of 6-Year-Old Shot by Great-Grandad Want Tougher Laws | This Morning

well stanley's parents jenny diese and annie metcalf join us now thank you for coming in today and i am so sorry it's under these circumstances um just explain who you've got on your lap um this is stanley and when stanley passed away we got his ashes um and wanted to give something to elsie to keep because he's his twin sister twin sister yeah and so we made this specially we went to shop down to the build-a-bear shop we put some stanley's ashes inside along with her voice so when she presses his paw stanley's voice comes there as well so she takes it everywhere with her um would you just explain as a family what sort of relationship you had uh between between him and his great-grandfather because you were incredibly close very close yeah um it's like a second dad to me our family was really close we we spent christmases together birthdays celebrations just a normal happy family yeah why did he have that very powerful air rifle it was um stars behind a curtain in the hallway which is directly off the kitchen and what did he use it for he said he used it for shooting rabbits and bearing things outside in the countryside and that's what used it and you had no idea that a gun like that required a license um all that he hadn't applied the safety catch you had no idea and he hadn't applied for a license because he knew that he wouldn't be able to get one yes that's what he said yeah well essentially for an air rifle you don't need a license but if you modify it to the degree that he'd modified yes then you would require elizabeth yes which he probably wouldn't have got the thing is also that he had had a shipyard accident yes in the 1970s and injured his hands severely uh and so he was using his left hand and so for anyone who's seen an air rifle you normally [ __ ] the rifle absolutely you break it you break it um and you would need not only that you you've got your finger on the trigger and you would need to take off the safety or put on the safety cap yeah um so what do you think happened um i don't think he thought anything i think he just literally just picked that air rifle up and pointed at stanley and pulled the trigger that's what i think so he wouldn't have known that it was had a pellet in it that it was loaded he said he didn't know that he said he he did regularly put it away loaded it was a one pellet gun so yeah he often put it away loaded so i think he probably did have an idea and so you hear this gunshot yes and obviously you run straight to see what's happened to make sure that everybody's okay and um what did stanley say when you saw him um i walked into the kitchen and he had his arm over his to me and he just said gwen had shot me and i said no granny wouldn't do that to you suddenly i wouldn't shoot you and he said looked up at my grandmother and said why would you shoot my granddad so i checked his top and there was no blood i couldn't see anything initially i thought maybe he's play acting i didn't know so my mum took him off me i saw him walk out and the kitchen door his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his head went floppy at that point i knew something was wrong yeah and you called the ambulance yeah and you did find a little yes um when one put him down and we lifted the top right up by this point and there was a small pellet wound about five pence piece at the side of his tummy and that then i knew that he had been shot and i guess at that point you're just trying to keep him as calm as possible under the circumstances yeah you're trying to keep him calm but inside like you are panicking because you know this is your child and you need to make sure you want to protect your child well it was he got him in the ambulance and yeah and he was it was in a very bad way and you found out later on that it had actually um uh severed a major artery so it was severe internal bleeding and eventually he suffered a cardiac arrest he suffered a rest in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and then you lost him yeah which is uh you know the i can't i can't imagine the pain i can't imagine that you weren't there at the time where you said it was only only afterwards and this was explain your relationship with um with him as a as a dad just um we just did everything together he'd come to work with me on on a saturday morning we played football you know we went to watch football he was just like my shadow yeah um don't worry it's having to go through a court case like that under those circumstances for for any family so appalling um but you were concerned that there was little remorse although and i i'm i'm sort of legally obliged to say that mr justice lavender in his sentences said i've read your as in albert's statements and ready accept that your remorse for what you did your great-grandson is genuine and profound although you have succeeded in conveying that to your granddaughter and her family the stress on you has manifested itself in amongst other things chest pains anxiety insomnia and you've been receiving counselling and medication but you don't feel that that's enough um no um i just presume but when when it happened i actually put my hand on mcgregor's knee and told him everything's going to be okay don't worry and this was just before stanley passed away when he found out stan had passed away he was nowhere to be seen he got taken away ill i thought to myself well he'll come and see me he'll come and see me because he knows he's done you know he's done a terrible thing and he will be sorry also initially he said that the the pellet had ricocheted and only forensic evidence afterwards made you know they could tell that it hadn't bounced off anything yeah yeah i think that's when things start to change for me personally because at the time i was thinking right this is a wicked shirt it's a terrible terrible accident then when we had the police officers come to tell us at 10 o'clock at night they brought the report back and said this had been a direct shot in a downward motion so it kind of ricocheted off the floor that's another for me was so so hard to deal with but it's been it's been since then i mean he's he's been vocal on on facebook he's been posting messages this was october last year he posted saying i'm too old to worry about who likes me and who dislikes me i have more important things to do if you hate me i don't care life goes on with or without you this has ripped a family in two hasn't it yes because there are members of the family who understand your point of view and the pain that you're going through and there's other members of the family who are very much aligned with him on his side of this yeah yeah there is a few people that now don't speak and which is another thing that's hard to deal with because we're so close and now they just don't talk and it's i feel like you're blaming me for something and i've done nothing wrong i've just lost my son and in the beginning andy says this um we didn't only just lose stanley that day we lost lc2 she couldn't cope with that she'd go to school she'd be very angry she was never angry how do you feel about the sentence andy um before um the sentencing we was kind of like led to believe that there was a chance he would get a suspended sentence um so at that point i'd have taken anything six months a year six years whatever it might have been when we went to court for the sentencing there was more came out than what than what we actually knew um so now i don't feel i feel stanley's life was worth more than he'll probably say of 18 months in prison stanley's life was worth more than 18 months what you are doing is calling for the licensing of weapons that are as dangerous as this and also education because regardless of whatever happened that day he was incredibly careless with the use of of that weapon that it was kept loaded the safety wasn't on that when he discharged that weapon he discharged it in the direction of a small child in a confined space and so you want education on on gun use of of air rifles which predominantly unless they're modified to that degree don't require a license no that's the thing um because i didn't know anything about licensing laws what changed my mind phil was the fact that we found out whether regardless whether it was modified or not it still would have caused the death stanley now under 12 foot pounds there's no need for license the proof is now that actually that weapon can cause death yeah so i can't walk away now it's something needs to be done yeah it needs to be changed so no one ever has to go through the things that you as a family do i'm just so sorry i'm so sorry you're saying you're having to have this conversation i really am and we give you so much love and please give our love to elsie as well thank you thank you thank you you

Channel: This Morning

Views: 1,138,339

Keywords: stanley metcalf death, stanley metcalf shot by great-grandad, albert grannon, albert grannon gun, albert grannon shot, pellet gun licensing, real life stories

Id: YJrQz5khuhQ

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019