A Kansas man will spend years behind bars for shooting a high school senior because the teenager had targeted his daughter in a water gun game, authorities say.
Ruben Contreras, 49, was sentenced to just over 3 1/2 years in prison for shooting Anakin Zehring when the high schooler was 18 years old in the spring of 2024. Contreras was found guilty of aggravated battery in November 2025.
On May 11, 2024, at about 4:45 p.m., Zehring and two of his friends arrived at the Walmart located on West Kellogg Drive in Goddard, Kansas. Zehring was driving a blue Chevrolet Spark, and the three teens had a simple mission: eliminate someone else in a game of "assassins" — a popular social game for high school seniors in which players are assigned a target to "assassinate" with a water gun.
Contreras' daughter and her boyfriend were walking into the Walmart to get supplies for her older brother's graduation party, according to an affidavit of probable cause reviewed by Law&Crime. Suddenly, the blue car pulled up to them, with its occupants "shouting profanities" as well as "I'm your senior assassin." Zehring reportedly proceeded to "pull out a gel blaster" — a "toy gun which fires polymer water beads" — and shoot the two of them with it.
According to the girl and her boyfriend, they did not know the individuals in the vehicle.
After they were hit with the gels, the couple went into the Walmart store to get away. A short time later, the boyfriend walked out of the Walmart to "confront" the people who had shot the water beads at them — as they were walking in. According to him, one of them "called him a b— and later told him to meet him out back of the Walmart."
Zehring and his two friends were ultimately "chased out" of the store by an employee, and they went to a nearby Dairy Queen before walking back to the Chevy Spark about five minutes later, the court document continues. Contreras' daughter had since called her father, saying she had been shot with a gel blaster, and they went into their vehicle to wait.
Once Zehring and his friends got back in his car and started to drive out of the lot, they observed a man "sprinting" toward them. Zehring slowed down, believing the man was just trying to cross the crosswalk, but when Contreras reached the vehicle, he pulled out a black Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun from his waist and fired one round through the back window into Zehring's lower back.
The car kept rolling in the parking lot and crashed into nearby shipping containers. Zehring had been hit in the kidney and liver and was "screaming that he could not move." The other two people in the car got out and "ran into a field" nearby.
Emergency services arrived and transported Zehring to an area hospital. Detectives also responded and found Contreras, still with the gun on him. He was arrested.
One witness told investigators that he heard a "pop" when the shot was fired, and when he asked Contreras what happened, the man replied, "they shot my daughter."
Contreras was also charged with attempted murder, but the jury acquitted him on that charge last November.
A GoFundMe posted by Zehring's parents in the weeks after the shooting said their "lives changed forever" when their son "was involved in the tragic incident at the Goddard Walmart shooting." They added that "his life took a dramatic turn on that fateful day" as "the bullet caused significant damage to his body."
The shooting left Zehring paralyzed.
The post Man paralyzes teenager at Walmart with gunshot to the back after the high schooler shoots his daughter with a water gel gun first appeared on Law & Crime.
