WARE, Mass. (AP) – The father of a 10-year-old killed in a hunting accident said the boy was shot as the two descended a hill and the elder man slipped. The shotgun he was carrying went off, striking the boy in the back.

“I was sliding,” Raymond F. Libby Jr., of Ware, told The Republican newspaper on Sunday, a day after his son died during a father-and-son outing.

“That’s when the gun went off. It hit some branches. I didn’t have my hand on the trigger … I jumped up quick and I ran to him before he collapsed.”

Libby asked his son, Raymond F. Libby III, if he was hit, and his answer “yes” would be the last word the father would hear him say.

He said he carried the boy at least 200 yards to the area where their truck was parked, where another hunter who heard the shot was emerging from the woods in the town of Hampden, south of Springfield. That man used his cell phone to call for help.

Hampden police, who received a 911 call at 9:30 a.m., said the fourth-grader was pronounced dead at Baystate Medical Center.

“He was my hunting and fishing buddy,” the father said. “I mean, he always waits for me after work.”

Police were investigating, but said it appeared to be an accident.

The father said the safety on his shotgun was on as he and his son, who carried a BB gun, went down the hill. The elder Libby said the boy always walked behind him, but had gotten ahead when the father slipped and fell.

Libby and his wife also have a 12-year-old daughter, Amber.

-Associated Press