Bullet from target shooters hits woman watching solar eclipse
NORTH SALEM, Ind. (WISH) — A 70-year-old woman was shot Monday while sitting on her front porch in rural Hendricks County and awaiting the total solar eclipse, the sheriff’s office said Tuesday.
The woman went to the hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to her arm. The injury was not believed to be life-threatening.
A news release issued Tuesday night from Hendricks County Sheriff’s Office did not identify the woman but said she lives on Ladoga Road near State Road 75 near the town of North Salem.
The woman initially believed a bird had flown into her and nipped her arm with its beak as the sky grew darker during the eclipse. In North Salem, the eclipse began about 1:49 p.m. and reached totality for about 3 minutes starting at 3:07 p.m.
Detectives think several people who were target shooting about 4,400 feet from the woman’s home were to blame for her injury, but no criminal charges were expected to be filed, the sheriff’s office says. The target shooters cooperated with investigators.
One of the target shooters, a 25-year-old man from Brownsburg who was not named in the release, told detectives that he’d fired a rifle into a dirt berm being used as a backstop. The bullet would have traveled beyond the backstop and through staggered rows of trees and two large farm fields before going through more trees and reaching the woman’s home, detectives believe.
North Salem is about a 45-minute drive west of Indianapolis.