Florida man shoots himself while showing off gun at bar

‘I don’t know if he was pretending to be a badass or something, but from what I can tell, it was completely by accident,’ the bar’s manager says

Carlos Feituuaki Tuifua, 28, is accused of improperly exhibiting his weapon at a bar, where he unintentionally shot himself (Escambia County Jail View)

A man accidentally shot himself while showing off his gun at a bar in Florida, local reports say.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, the incident happened on Thursday night at O’Riley’s Uptown Tavern in Pensacola. Police told WEAR-TV the self-shooter is 28-year-old Carlos Feituuaki Tuifua, who survived and is recovering.

Surveillance video viewed by the Journal showed how the accident unfolded. At 11pm, Mr Tuifua was sitting at the bar talking to a man and a woman. About a minute later, he pulled out a handgun and showed it to them for a few seconds.

Then, the Journal reported, Mr Tuifua made a sudden gesture “as if he were putting the gun into an invisible holster” below his shoulder, but instead shot himself in the torso.

The bar’s manager, Warren Sonnen, saw the whole thing.

“I don’t know if he was pretending to be a badass or something,” Mr Sonnen told the Journal. “But from what I can tell, it was completely by accident.”

Immediately afterward, Mr Tuifua left the bar. Police say he checked himself into a hospital, where they were able to contact him. On Friday, they arrested him at his home.

Mr Tuifua has been charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and improper exhibition of a weapon, WEAR-TV has reported.

Gun violence in the United States has surged in recent years. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 2020 saw the most gun-related deaths of any year in the past two decades.