Hard by the banks of the Loyalhanna Creek, the village of Darlington looks much like a New England town, with its small bridge, splashing water, wandering deer and scrubbed-white clapboard church perched above the road.

It is the kind of place where boys like Christopher Harr could walk out of the house, stroll to the backyard and cast a line for trout in to the stocked stream or, when the first tang of autumn touched the mountains, go into the woods with his father, hunting in the lands around Westmoreland County.

"I'd already taught him how to handle a gun. He knew about how to respect a gun," Daniel Harr said of his son. "We were getting ready to go to the hunter-safety course."

His eyes swollen and his throat catching, Mr. Harr took another pull on a cigarette and said what you had to know was coming: Christopher Ryan Harr, 11, was playing with two schoolmates Friday night about a quarter-mile up Darlington Road. The parents in that house had gone out. One of the boys went upstairs, found a .30-caliber rifle, and brought it downstairs.

"There was no clip in the rifle, but there was one in the chamber," Mr. Harr said. A single shot struck Christopher in the face.

"From what I was told, he didn't feel it," Daniel Harr said.

Ligonier Township Police and Westmoreland County detectives Saturday continued their investigation of the shooting. Authorities want to know why the parents were out, and both they and Mr. Harr want to know why a rifle was unsecured in a house where three boys -- two of them 11, the other 12 -- were playing alone.

Mr. Harr said authorities told him the adults who live in the house said they had gone to visit a relative at a local care home. Police would not comment on whether charges are pending, and District Attorney John Peck could not be reached.

The home where Christopher died is atop a rutted driveway along Darlington Road. On Saturday, yellow police tape still fluttered next to abandoned latex gloves worn by emergency crews. An unused swingset stood in one corner of the yard. A large splatter of blood stained the unpainted, wooden back porch stoop where the boy died. No one answered the door and neighbors declined to identify the family.

"It's just a tragedy," said one.

At the township police station, an officer handed out the sparse news release that offered few details, other than to make clear that one boy had accidentally shot another.

She spoke for a moment about how silly other calls for police service suddenly could seem: people parking in the wrong spot, neighbors arguing.

"This makes you want to go home and hug your kids," she said.

At the Harr residence, the family's remaining two children, a 4-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, sat on the front stoop with their mother. Daniel Harr didn't want to give their names and said he was speaking publicly only to deflect questions from his distraught wife.

He described his son as a boy who loved fishing and video games, and played drums in the band at Ligonier Valley Middle School. He propped up a photo -- dad makes his living as a photographer -- for reporters to copy. He said the two boys his son was visiting have been to his home for dinner, and he described them as courteous and respectful.

Hunting rifles are not uncommon in the Ligonier Valley where -- like many other Pennsylvania school districts -- the first day of deer season is often a holiday, whether on or off the school calendar. Mr. Harr said most folks there know enough to keep guns unloaded, locked away and unavailable to curious children.

"I feel very bad about the boys. I don't blame them one bit," he said. "It's a parents' responsibility to make sure your children are supervised, which was not done with my son ... and now my son's dead because of it.

"Obviously the gun was not secured," Mr. Harr said. "That one bullet in the chamber took my son's life."

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