A Schuylkill County man fired five rifle rounds at a deer that struck an occupied home nearly 500 yards away, and a woman inside believes one of them passed through her hair as she lay in bed, the Pennsylvania Game Commission says.
Travis Stoltzfus, 21, of Schuylkill Haven, faces a felony count of discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, two misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person and 20 summary counts under the state Game and Wildlife Code in connection with the Aug. 7 incident in Washington Township.
State Police-Schuylkill Haven responded to the home at 449 Dad Burnhams Rd. the night of Aug. 7 after it was struck by gunfire, according to State Game Warden Ryan Zawada, who filed the charges. Because one of the occupants appeared to have been grazed by a projectile, Zawada said he was assigned the following day to complete a hunting-related shooting incident report and to reinterview everyone involved.
At the home, the two residents showed Zawada where the projectiles had hit. By tracing the damage, Zawada determined five projectiles entered the house in two areas, three through the master bathroom and two through a small attic space.
One round entered the exterior wall, traveled through the attic, through a hallway wall, across the hallway, through a bedroom wall and into the bedroom, Zawada said. A second passed through two 2x4s and lodged in a third, where the warden recovered it. The three projectiles that entered the bathroom continued through a bedroom wall and into the bedroom.
The woman who lives at the home told Zawada she believed she was struck by one of the four projectiles that entered the bedroom. She said that after the first round came through, she and a man living in the home sat up in bed. When a later round entered the room, she said, she felt a sensation she compared to someone grabbing a handful of her hair and pulling it to the side. Zawada said he believes that sensation was caused by a projectile traveling through her hair.
Stoltzfus agreed to speak with the warden and walked him through the property. Stoltzfus said he and a friend were trying to kill whitetail deer for crop damage on the farm, and he showed Zawada where he was standing when he fired five shots at a deer. Using a mapping app, Zawada said he plotted the shooting location at 492 yards from the victims’ home.
Stoltzfus told the warden that his friend held a spotlight on the deer in the dark and that he fired a suppressed .308 rifle. He said that in the spotlight he could not see much detail on the deer, mainly their backs and glowing eyes, and that he was aiming at their eyes as he fired.
When asked to point out where the deer were standing, Stoltzfus indicated an area almost directly between his shooting position and the home, the warden said. Stoltzfus said that in the dark he thought the deer were slightly to the left of the house. He acknowledged to Zawada that he knew the home was in the area he was shooting toward before that night, and he agreed it was negligent to shoot in that direction regardless of where he believed the deer were standing.
Stoltzfus said he heard no other shooting at the time and that the deer ran off uninjured after he fired.
All five rounds struck the home while both residents were inside, Zawada said, because Stoltzfus failed to properly identify what was beyond the deer.
Along with the felony and misdemeanor counts, Stoltzfus is charged with 10 summary counts of shooting at or causing injury to human beings while hunting, five counts of damage to real or personal property and five counts of unlawful hunting in a safety zone.
A preliminary hearing has not yet been scheduled.
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