Bullets know no boundaries A bullet's damage is a reminder to hunters to be careful and watch surroundings

By Nancy Kriz
WARWICK — As hunting season continues, a Warwick woman wants to remind hunters about the dangers of shooting close to populated areas.

Patricia Tripken returned to her Warwick Grove home from her job as principal of George Grant Mason School in Tuxedo on Nov. 19 to find a bullet hole in right side of her sliding glass door.

She found the actual bullet in lodged in a nearby door frame.

This past Sunday evening, Warwick police identified the bullet as coming from a rifle using a .270 caliber bullet, one of many types of hunting firearms for sale in the marketplace.

An eight inch hole
Tripken’s back yard, part of the larger Warwick Grove community, has a certain amount of footage before it abuts a railroad track. Behind the railroad track is an open field.

“I came home close to 5 p.m. and it was not yet dark in the house,” said Tripken. “I found my window was shot out. It’s a huge sliding glass door. The whole right side is shattered with about an eight inch hole.”

It was a frightening thing to see, Tripken admitted.

“I think it was a hunter,” she said. “I called Warwick police and they responded quickly. But they did not seemed too concerned. They seemed to think it was a hunter. Bullets can travel, they told me. You can’t hunt within 500 feet of someone’s house, but a bullet can travel almost a mile. There was not much they could do about it.”

No criminal, but reckless
New York State Environmental Conversation law states hunters “cannot discharge a firearm within 500 feet, crossbow within 250 feet or longbow within 150 feet of any school, playground, occupied factory or church, dwelling, farm building, or structure unless you own it, lease it, are an immediate member of the family, an employee, or have the owner’s consent. This does not apply to the discharge of a shotgun over water when hunting migratory game birds and no dwelling, public structure, livestock, or person is in the line of fire.”

That doesn’t mean much to Tripken.

“I just kind of went along with that,” she said. “I was grateful I wasn’t home, that my grandchildren weren’t there. The next day, my neighbors reminded me how scary it was. So I called the police again. I had to ask him to take the bullet out of the door and asked him to run it through his ballistics people so I could be assured it was a hunter’s bullet. He told me again a bullet can travel up to a mile and it must have traveled a long way, because if it was shot really close, it would have gone through the door frame.”

While she’s fairly confident it was a hunter’s shot which caused the damage, that still doesn’t help Tripken with the repairs which must be made to the door.

“It might not be criminal, it but it is reckless,” she said. “I now have probably over $1,000 worth of damage to my home with no recourse to that, and I have a $1,000 deductible on my insurance. I’m fairly confident I’ll have a $1,000 bill to pay. I’m choosing to believe someone doesn’t know what they’ve done. If someone comes knocking at my door and says, ‘It was me, here’s the $1,000,’ that would be awesome. But if not, maybe the person who was out there in the field should say, ‘I won’t do that again.’”

The Warwick Grove community, she said, is a very popular neighborhood. Lots of people walk outside all the time.

“How terrible it would have been if they had hurt somebody or killed someone,” she said.

Teachable moment
Tripken, an educator, was determined to get the word out to hunters in a teachable moment:

Take notice of where you hunt.
Be really careful.

People can be killed by stray bullets.

“I think we hear hunters in the woods and we take it for granted,” said Tripken. “Somebody did damage my property and now I have to pay for it,” she said. “I think it was reckless behavior. I can see a field in the distance. If I can see them, can’t they see me? Don’t they know they’re aiming at a row of houses? If they don’t know it, then they should know it now.”

Tripken said on Sunday evening she and her neighbors again called police after hearing gunshots in the field behind their homes during the late afternoon.

When the police officer arrived, she said, he told her that on Saturday night, police arrested a man on the property behind the Warwick Grove complex - not the open field behind the complex - for shooting at a deer from his car.

But the firearm did not use .270 caliber bullets.

‘How does 500 feet protect you?’

Tripken also said police officer told her an officer visited the farm property where that open field is located on Saturday too. The owner told police he allows up to 40 people to hunt on that property.

“He said that property is outside village limits, and shooting inside village limits is not permitted,” she said. “If they shot on that property, which is not within village limits, they would be within their legal rights to do so.”

Use common sense, she urged hunters. Just because the law says 500 feet is the legal requirement, that still doesn’t make it appropriate to hunt near residential areas.

“How does 500 feet protect you?” Tripken added. “It’s not very comforting. To the hunters, I’d tell them to please not hunt behind residential property. Even though you (legally) can, I hope you don’t. A bullet hit a home. I hope it brings awareness to a serious situation. People need to keep their bullets on their own properties.”