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Lowellville Rod and Gun official: Stray bullet is not ours
Lowellville
Rod and Gun Club
By jeanne starmack
lowellville
The president of the Lowellville Rod and Gun Club says he doesn’t believe a stray bullet that hit a house in March came from the club’s gun range.
Nonetheless, said Derek Donatelli, the club reinforced its backstop and will ask members to be alert for shooting that is not coming from the range.
The range remains closed until the club tests to make sure no bullets are straying off it, he said.
The range closed March 23, the same day a bullet hit a window at a house on Penny Lane in Lowellville.
There are two houses on the street.
Besides the house that was hit March 23, the other house also was hit by a bullet, he said. That bullet hit the east side of the house though, so it could not have come from the range, he said.
“But there’s definitely something going on,” he said, adding that the shot that hit the second house had to have been fired from farther east, closer to Pennsylvania.
Donatelli said the club brought in 30 truckloads of dirt to reinforce the backstop, filling in areas that were chipped away after 25 years of shooting, he said.
He said that even if a bullet did ricochet off a discharged shot or a stone, it would not ricochet up over the backstop. It would ricochet sideways, he said.
Donatelli said its more likely that shooters in the woods hit the houses.
“Am I ready to say it wasn’t us? I’m not ready to say that,” he said.
“But everybody’s telling me there’s no way a bullet could reach that house from our facility.”
He said he suspects people could be shooting in an area that includes a power line right-of-way in Poland Township to the east of the club.
“My intentions are to test, then talk to police departments and tell them they’ll have to patrol that area,” he said.
He said the club will ask its members to call police if they hear shooting that’s not coming from the range.