MEXICO – Nine-year-old Tyler Richard was improving Wednesday at a Portland hospital, a day after he accidentally shot himself in the chest with his grandfather’s .38-caliber Derringer.

“He’s up and walking around,” Charles Martin said Wednesday night from his Swift River Road home where the accident occurred. “I get to talk to him at midnight,” he said, when he drives to Portland to pick up his wife at the jetport and then go to Maine Medical Center.

“He pulled the hose out of his nose that they use to keep his lung inflated. He pulled it out himself,” Martin said. “He’s very strong-willed,” he said, and enjoys biking, computer games and baseball. “He likes a lot of things really. He’s our baseball boy, for sure.”

Martin said his grandson is expected to be discharged in a few days.

“It’s a miracle thing,” he said of the boy’s recovery from the gunshot wound.

Tyler was left with his grandfather by one of his parents early Tuesday morning. While Martin was away buying food hours later, Tyler found the loaded weapon under a sofa cushion in the living room, Martin said Wednesday. The boy accidentally fired a round, hitting himself in the chest, police said.

Tyler then ran down the driveway to the road where Thomas Harrison of Roxbury Road saw him bleeding and waving for help. Harrison rushed him to Rumford Hospital, where Tyler was stabilized and moved to Portland for surgery.

Police investigating the shooting confiscated the handgun, as well as a muzzleloader and shotgun, Martin said Thursday night.

“I don’t care what they do with them,” he said, because he will not have a gun in the house again.

Also taken by police, Martin said, were some young marijuana plants he was growing for a medical condition he has. He did not say what the condition is, but admitted he does not have a prescription for the marijuana.

“This was the first time I’d even tried it. They’re just little bitty things,” he said of the plants, declining to say how many there were and how long he’d had them.

State police have wrapped up their investigation of the incident and will forward a report to the district attorney for consideration of charges, Detective Sgt. Walter Grzyb said Tuesday.