Steven Leannais

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The way party-goers handled a gun they didn't know was loaded in the moments before an apparent accidental fatal shooting at a Cleveland apartment runs afoul of almost all acceptable gun-handling measures, according to a gun expert interviewed by cleveland.com.

The minutes leading to the fatal shooting of Anthony Stanford II were streamed on Facebook Live last week. The video was provided to a cleveland.com reporter Saturday. Gun expert Kim Rodecker, owner of Concealed Carry Courses in Cleveland, teaches gun safety courses in addition to being the chief instructor of concealed carry certification.

After watching the video, Rodecker said it seemed apparent that no one in the video had any sort of gun safety training.

This pamphlet provided to cleveland.com shows the top three National Rifle Association (NRA) gun rules. Kim Rodecker, a Cleveland gun expert, told cleveland.com that the people who handled a gun at a deadly Cleveland dinner party, some of which was live-streamed on Facebook, did not follow any of these rules.

"It was no more than idiots with a gun, and they had alcohol around them," he said. "The two worst possible things you could do."

The video shows partygoers in 30-year-old Steven Leannais' West Side apartment. One man waved the gun around and placed it in his mouth several times.

"Putting a muzzle in your mouth is about as dumb as you can get," Rodecker said.

One man in the video asked if the video is recording and said: "We're going to walk up to this guy and say 'we're going to cap this guy's ass.'"

"His finger is on the trigger," Rodecker said. "The muzzle's already pointed toward somebody. Again. Finger on the trigger. It shouldn't be that way. He's acting a total fool pointing the firearm everywhere."

Someone told the man in the video that the gun was loaded and a woman exclaimed, "Don't point that at me."

The man pointed the gun at his face and Leannais grabbed it, took out the magazine and handed it back to the man, the video shows.

"Yeah, he's got the magazine out of the firearm, but doesn't know if there's a round in the chamber of the firearm," Rodecker said.

The footage ends moments before the shooting. What happened next was detailed in court documents and police reports culled from statements of the various partygoers who witnessed the shooting.

Leannais picked up the gun, lowered it to his side and pulled the trigger, police said. The bullet that was left in the chamber struck Stanford in the abdomen, police said. He was taken to MetroHealth where he died Friday night.

Leannais is charged with third-degree felony involuntary manslaughter. Police say he was drunk at the time of the shooting, court records state.

Rodecker, who grew up in North Olmsted, has been handling firearms since he was 6 years old, under his father's supervision.

"We were raised fishing, trapping, and hunting, and my father's firearms were around me all the time," Rodecker said. "My father instructed me when I was very, very young on what to do; what not to do and most importantly, not to touch them unless he was with me."

Rodecker served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he worked military police duties and as a primary marksmanship instructor.

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