Article Courtesy of Bay News 9

By Kim Leoffler

Published May 10, 2017

Some Hernando County residents are on edge after stray bullets hit their home. No one was hurt but they are pretty shaken up.
 

It's happening in the Trillium community in Brooksville, an area of homes that have recently been built, which is why this hasn't been a problem before. The neighborhood is usually very quiet, but earlier this month that changed when residents heard gunshots. "We came home we heard gunshots the neighbors were scurrying inside. I wanted to go out and get my mail my neighbors were outside and they're all like we heard a bullet wiz past our head. It lodged somewhere and we think it lodged at the side of your house,” Michelle Nadzeika said.

Sure enough she found a hole outside the wall to her kid's room where police pulled out a bullet.

It's not the only time residents here have seen evidence of gun shots. Nadzeika's neighbor has a bullet hole in her fence and another neighbor had one in their garage. She said now many people in the area are on edge.

"So now every time we hear gunshots we're all inside and we're all calling the police. Because that bullet landed so close to my children's windows we're going upstairs, we're shutting all our doors, and we're moving to the back of our house. We're staying away from our front door,” she explained.

According to police reports, those gunshots are coming from different backyard gun ranges at nearby homes. For the bullet that hit Nadzeika's home, police say the berm at the range where it originated was too low. We're told that beam is now being fixed before another shot is fired.

SB 130?

A similar situation happened in St. Petersburg in 2015, where a man set up a range in his backyard. That lead to SB 130 being passed last year which restricts recreational shooting in an area the person knows is residential and where there are homes within one acre of each other.

SB 130 does not apply in the case of the shots fired near Nadzeika's home, however. because the backyard gun range in question is near the Trillium neighborhood, not in it.

According to the police report, no charges were filed against the people who fired the shot that landed at Nadzeika's home.

One of those people firing at the time, Devon Vasquez, said the incident was just an accident.

“We don’t try to hit anybody’s houses. We didn’t see the house peeking over the berm that we were shooting at,” Vasquez explained.

“What they need to understand is they are moving out into the country where people can bear arms and where people can shoot on their property,” he added.

Vasquez has meet with Nadzeika and her family and offered to fix the hole in her home.

A reminder (hopefully)

Nadzeika hopes this incident serves as a reminder to all recreational shooters in the area that a neighborhood is nearby.

"They know they have a residential community in their yard now, I understand it wasn't here before but it's here now, and at some point they have to be held accountable for how they're handling their firearms what condition their range is in which direction they're firing,” she explained.

Vasquez said materials are being brought in the last weekend in April to fix the berm before it is used again.

According to police reports, Hernando County deputies have been called out to that neighborhood twice because of gun shots in the area. The first time was because of the range mentioned above. The second time deputies were unable to determine where the shots came from.