A St. Albert man is feeling lucky to have escaped serious injury after being shot in the face by a pellet gun during a visit to Ontario in late August.
Grandin resident Eric Thompson, 64, was in Oakville for an oldtimers hockey tournament and a visit with his brother when he was struck in the cheek by a pellet fired from a high-powered pellet gun.
“All of a sudden I heard a thwack sound and something hit me in the face real hard and I started bleeding all over the place,” Thompson recalled. “I said, ‘I think somebody just shot me.’”
The incident happened around noon on Aug. 29, which was a bright sunny Sunday. Thompson was a passenger in a convertible being driven by his brother Brian. They were driving with the top down along Oakville’s busy Lakeshore Road, a Whyte Avenue-type street lined with shops and upscale condominiums.
“It sounded like somebody hitting a baseball,” Thompson said. “It burned pretty good … like a hot burning sensation.”
He was stunned, bleeding and sore, but coherent and aware.
Police cars arrived within minutes and an ambulance took him to a hospital where a surgeon tried to remove the pellet under local anesthetic. That attempt failed. Thompson flew home the next day with the pellet still lodged in his cheek.
A surgeon at St. Albert’s Sturgeon Community Hospital removed the pellet last Friday under general anesthetic. A member of the St. Albert RCMP was on hand to retrieve the pellet, bag it as evidence and send it to the Halton Regional Police Service.
Thompson told police he heard the pellet whistling toward him from behind and above. Police traced the shot to a sixth-storey balcony of a nearby condominium building. They found a pellet rifle in a dumpster at the bottom of the building’s trash chute. They arrested a 24-year-old resident of the building.
“It appears that this was a completely random incident and was not directed specifically at the victim,” says a press release issued by the police service.
Police have charged Andreei Radulescu with assault with a weapon, careless use of a firearm, possession of a weapon dangerous to the public peace, and breach of probation.
Radulescu was on probation at the time of the incident and was restricted from having weapons. He’s now on out bail, Thompson said.
While he’s very impressed with the serious treatment afforded his case by police forces in Oakville and St. Albert, he’s “frustrated with the justice system.”
“These guys have multiple charges against them and seem to be able to get away with it and carry on their lives without consequences,” Thompson said.
Police haven’t released details about the weapon used. All Thompson knows is that it was a high-powered Winchester pellet gun.
Pellet guns are typically used for pest control or target practice and can range in price from $50 to $500, said a St. Albert gun retailer named Ken, who owns The Shootist.
Pellet guns that can generate muzzle speeds exceeding 152.4 metres (500 feet) per second require a licence to purchase and must be registered with the federal government, Ken said.
Any gun demands common sense of users, he said.
“It doesn’t have to be very powerful if somebody gets hit in the eye, to do an awful lot of damage,” Ken said.
Thompson can’t believe someone would shoot a gun in the high-traffic area where the incident occurred.
“There were people walking with strollers with little kids in them. That’s very disturbing to me,” he said. “I don’t know how anybody could do that with a conscience.”
Now, nearly two weeks later, Thompson has a bandage on the lower part of his right cheek that covers a blood-clotted hole mark. His mouth and jaw remain sore.
“I consider myself pretty lucky,” he said. “The doctor told me, an inch over, he could have hit my jugular.”
