A 15-year-old Amish girl is dead this afternoon thanks to a careless and lazy shooter. WCPO reports:
A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle shot the gun into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away, a sheriff said Tuesday.
Rachel Yoder was shot in the head Thursday night while traveling to her home in Wayne County, between Columbus and Akron. She had attended a Christmas party for employees, most of them under 18 years old, at an Amish produce farm and was riding home alone when she was shot, Wayne County sheriff’s Capt. Douglas Hunter said.
Hunter said his department had traced a trail of blood along the road for about three-eighths of a mile into Holmes County in an area of farms and rolling hills.
I CANNOT believe that anyone is dumb enough to fire a loaded weapon in the air. Thanks to Newton we know that what goes up must come down, and in this case the coming down part ended tragically. The probability of someone being hit in the head with the round may be relatively small, but the fact that there is a chance at all means you shouldn’t do it. Ever. No matter what caliber of firearm you’re using.
Rule #4 tells us to always be aware of our target and what is beyond, and in this case our irresponsible gun owner had no idea what lay 1.5 miles downrange. If he was in a secluded enough spot where discharging his firearm wouldn’t have disturbed the neighbors then I guarantee he could have found a mound of dirt or a tree to take the shot instead of a random stranger.
Know what was the most disturbing part of the story to me?
No charges have been filed.
Reckless endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, assault, firing across a road… I could go on for ages. This is a fantastic example of a person who appears to be too irresponsible to be loose in society.
I normally hate it when blog posts get all Nancy Grace on a topic, but I really needed to vent my bile on this one.
[Story via Reddit, photo via TheCadExpert]
