No charges for gunfire from helicopter: I-Team
COLUMBIA TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found no one will face charges for gunfire coming from a helicopter over a gun range in a local neighborhood.
The I-Team revealed cell phone video of the incident last fall and a prosecutor just wrapped up a review.
That review determined no criminal charges should be filed, so we investigated to find the reason behind it.
Last October, cell phone video captured gunshots and tracers coming from a helicopter flying over a gun range in Columbia Township.
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A 911 caller at the time reported, “It sounds like there was machine-gun fire and a helicopter. So, I don’t know what’s going on over there.”
That led to an investigation by the Lorain County Sheriff’s Department and a review by the Elyria prosecutor.
So, we worked to find out what led to the ruling of no charges. Chief Prosecutor Scott Strait told the I-Team he couldn’t find any law making what you saw in that video a crime.
One of the gun range neighbors who had been alarmed by what happened reacted to the ruling.
“Well, it’s unbelievable. I don’t understand their reasoning behind it,” he said.
In October, we went to the owner of the gun range asking about what was being fired from the helicopter.
“Couple of sub-machine guns that were being fired with tracers,” Brian Lanckiewicz said.
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He added that the gunfire and chopper were all tied in with a recording for a video. He insisted it was legal and safe with shots fired into mounds of dirt.
“Everything we were doing, we were shooting down into the mounds which is way safer than shooting from the ground,” Lanckiewicz said.
Earlier, the FAA told us it found no federal law against shooting live ammo from a chopper as long as it’s done with reasonable safety measures.
For this story, Lorain County Sheriff’s Captain Robert Vansant said, “we still looked at it and approached it from all avenues, from all sides.”
He said the case is closed, but if deputies get more complaints, they’ll investigate again.
“We would look into it. We’re not gonna just brush this off because we got a ruling from the court. It’s a case-by-case basis,” Captain Vansant said.
This comes after years of tension between the gun range and neighbors, but nothing quite like the fallout after gunfire from a helicopter.
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