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FORT MILL — A York County
sheriff’s sergeant has been disciplined after his gun accidentally
discharged inside a department substation at Baxter Village, according
to sheriff’s documents.
Sgt. James Brown III, 43, was suspended
without pay for 22 days and was responsible for repairing the district
office’s walls and replacing a damaged computer monitor, according to a
supervisor’s report obtained by The Herald.
Brown also was ordered to undergo counseling, the report states.
On
April 30 at the sheriff’s substation at 1826 2nd Baxter Crossing, Brown
installed a 25-year-old deputy’s gun with a new Magwell, a device that
acts like a funnel and makes reloading gun magazines easier. He loaded
the deputy’s gun with a new magazine, an ammunition storage and feeding
apparatus.
According to the report, he placed the gun, a Glock model 22, LAR 347, on the deputy’s desk.
While
discussing “dry firing” techniques – when the gun’s trigger is pulled
without a discharge – Brown grabbed the gun again, this time aiming it
at a partition behind his desk.
Brown told investigators he didn’t
check to make sure the magazine was empty, according to the report.
Instead, he pressed the trigger and the gun dry fired.
He then
racked the slide and pressed the trigger again, sending a .40-caliber
bullet through the partition behind his desk, through the drywall and
striking a chair and computer in the deputy work area. Officers found
the bullet lodged in the wall behind the computer.
No one was injured.
“I
had not ensured the gun was empty, and when I racked the slide, the gun
chambered and fired as it should,” Brown wrote in a statement. “I did
not check the gun to be clear prior to dry firing it, and it is
completely my fault that it discharged.
“The weapon worked as it was supposed to.”
Deputies
dry fire to ensure that their weapons work when needed, York County
Sheriff Bruce Bryant said. Any time a gun is dismantled, deputies have
to make sure to realign it correctly.
In this case, Brown fired the weapon to make sure it was working properly after he took it apart.
Accidental weapons discharge isn’t an “uncommon occurrence” in law enforcement, Bryant said.
“I’ve
been in this business 40 years, and I’ve seen this happen many times
before,” Bryant said. “You just thank God that nobody was injured.”
Brown and the deputy were the only officers in the office at the time, Bryant said, and didn’t endanger anyone else.
The gun, Bryant said, was “pointed in a safe direction.”
Deputies
aren’t required to dry fire at a shooting range or isolated location.
Bryant said an office probably wasn’t the best place to dry fire, but
the sergeant and deputy “were a long, long way from a firing range.”
“The
bottom line is, the guy made a mistake,” Bryant said. “This is the last
thing we want to happen for a weapon to be accidentally discharged.”
A
captain’s review board examines the severity of each accidental
discharge and decides what disciplinary measures need to be taken,
Bryant said. The decision ultimately rests with Bryant.
Brown has since returned to active duty.
The
substation is housed on the second floor of a building the department
shares with the Fort Mill branch of the York County Library and the York
County Economic Development Board.
Asked if library patrons could
have been in danger, Bryant said it was “impossible” because a concrete
floor separates the upstairs and downstairs units. The library is
located on the first floor.
Karen Manera, library branch manager, said no customers reported hearing a gunshot the day Brown fired the gun.
The incident occurred just before 6 p.m. on a Monday. The library closed for the day at 8 p.m.
Customers haven’t complained about the library’s close proximity to the substation, Manera said.
“We don’t see them much at all,” she said. “They’re not in our way. We’re not in theirs, I hope.”
Jerry
Wood of Rock Hill said that he thinks deputies, whose patrol vehicles
share the same parking lot with library patrons, are very visible
outside. But he isn’t worried.
“Mistakes happen,” said Will
Hutchinson, a Rock Hill short film director who spends his days in the
library doing research for his movies. “I feel pretty comfortable as
long as no one got hurt and the sheriff’s office is trying to keep that
from happening again.”
Bryant said the sheriff’s office has
started looking at its dry-firing policies. They’ve discussed whether to
prohibit dry firing in certain areas, he said.
In a more recent
incident, a York County deputy’s son accidentally fired his father’s
pistol earlier this month when he tried to get his Xbox game console out
of a safe, according to a sheriff’s report.
Around 1:30 p.m. June 4, the deputy left his house to run errands but heard a bang as he pulled out of the driveway.
His wife ran to the driveway and said his gun went off, according to the report.
The
deputy – whom The Herald is not naming so as not to identify his son –
went into the house to find his son and his weapon so he could secure
and lock it. He found the bullet in the lower tray of his gun safe. He
immediately contacted the sheriff’s office to report the incident.
The
deputy’s son, 17, wrote a statement explaining that he went to get his
Xbox from the safe. His mother unlocked the safe, and he picked up the
game console, along with the gun.
“The next thing I remember, the gun had gone off and both my mother and I were both shocked,” the teen wrote.
The
deputy’s wife told police she didn’t see her son with the gun until it
went off. Neither the boy nor his mother were injured.
“It is my
normal practice to lock my service weapon in our gun safe immediately
after I arrive home after working my shift,” the deputy stated in the
report. “I have also had discussions at length with my children that
they should never touch my service weapon for any reason.”
Two days before the incident, the deputy said he had the same discussion with his son.
No disciplinary actions were taken against the deputy since he wasn’t involved in the actual incident, according to the report.
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