MEXICO – A 9-year-old boy was in serious condition at Maine Medical Center in Portland on Tuesday after suffering an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest earlier in the day, a state police detective said.

Maine State Police Detective Sgt. Walter Grzyb said Tyler Richard shot himself with a two-shot Derringer-style break-action .38-caliber handgun about 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Swift River Road home of his grandparents, Crystal Radcliff and Charles Martin.

Tyler had been dropped off at the home by one of his parents earlier in the morning to be watched by his grandfather, police said.

“We do believe the discharge was an accidental discharge by the boy himself,” Grzyb said of the gunshot.

Radcliff and Martin were out of the house at the time of the shooting. “The grandfather had stepped out to run a couple of errands down in the town,” Grzyb said. Radcliff was also out of the house at the time, he added.

The handgun was apparently loaded and hidden in a hutch, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland said Tuesday night. “The boy retrieved the gun, and it went off in the living room,” he said. One shot fired into his chest, he said.

After wounding himself, Tyler walked about 100 feet from the house to the side of the road where he flagged down a passing motorist, Thomas Harrison, Grzyb said.

Harrison drove the boy in his 1999 Ford F150 pickup truck to Rumford Hospital, where the youth’s wound was stabilized. Then Tyler was airlifted by LifeFlight of Maine to the Portland hospital, where he underwent surgery.

McCausland said Harrison gave hospital staff what information he had and was told he could leave. Harrison returned to where he picked Tyler up, where he met police, McCausland said.

Tyler told local medical staff and local police he accidentally shot himself, Grzyb said.

Tyler is expected to survive. His prognosis appeared good Tuesday night, according to Grzyb and the boy’s grandfather, Martin.

“He’s doing fine, in surgery under stable conditions, and from the word I got just a few minutes ago, he should be home in five days,” Martin said around 5:45 p.m. Tuesday.

Late Tuesday night, a Maine Medical Center representative said no information would be released about the boy.

Martin said Tyler is the son of his stepdaughter, Katherine Caponi, who is in her 20s and lives in Dixfield, and Jeff Richard of Rumford Center. He said the parents share custody of their son.

Tyler was most recently a student at Rumford Elementary School.

Besides state police, officers and detectives from Mexico and Rumford, and two Oxford County deputies responded to the scene.

Rumford police Chief Stacy Carter said his department’s detectives also responded to the scene as well as to the hospital. Rumford police helped secure the site, as did members of the Mexico Police Department. Sgt. Roy Hodson and officer Dustin Broughton of the Mexico Police Department remained at the site for much of the day.

During the investigation, police executed two search warrants on the home. Under one warrant police seized three firearms, including the Derringer, as well as ammunition, Grzyb said.

Under the other warrant, agents with Maine Drug Enforcement Agency seized suspected marijuana plants growing inside the ranch-style house, just north of the Black Bridge along state Route 120, also known as Swift River Road.

“We will present all of this to the district attorney’s office in Oxford County for a review of potential charges,” Grzyb said.

Disputing the statement by state Department of Public Safety spokesman McCausland that the handgun had been hidden in a hutch, Martin said the loaded weapon was “hid between the cushions in my couch. That’s why it blows my mind where he found it.”

He said Tyler was dropped off at 5:30 a.m., and the two watched television for awhile before Martin left to get food Tyler wanted.

“I came home,” he said, “and I started hollering his name. ‘Don’t tell me he went outside because he promised me he wouldn’t go out of the house,'” he said he thought to himself.

He put groceries away and called him again, waiting a couple of minutes and screamed again.

“I thought I heard a ‘What?'” he said.

Then the police arrived and “one officer comes around and tells me to put my hands on my head and tells me to lay on the ground,” Martin said. “‘I’m just calling for my grandson,'” he said he told them. “Then they started faking it out. They didn’t say a word” about what happened to Tyler. “Hours later, I get word of what happened,” he said.

Asked why he kept a loaded gun in his house, Martin said, “I’m a male I guess, and I do like ’em, but, “I’ll never have another one in this house.”

Regional editor Scott Thistle, staff editor Mary Delamater and staff writer Eileen Adams contributed to this report.