Bullet enters Florida Keys home after people were target shooting with AR-15, cops say
Florida Keys deputies arrested three people Thursday who are accused of accidentally firing an AR-15 rifle into a nearby house while shooting at makeshift practice targets in a backyard.
The people were shooting from a yard in the 200 block of Kings Cove Road on Little Torch Key in the Lower Keys around 4 p.m. The bullet traveled east across about 300 yards of mangrove wetland before entering the house at Pirates Road, according to the sheriff’s office.
A woman at the residence called the sheriff’s office after the bullet broke both a window and a glass door, said sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt. She and her husband were in their bedroom with their dogs when the shot came through, Linhardt said. No one was wounded, he added.
When deputies arrived, they heard gunshots coming from Kings Cove Road, Linhardt said. When they drove to a home there, they found the three people — Robert Andrew Mayette, 51, Jessica Ellen Rene Hargrove, 25, and Nathan John David Charter-Kimberly, 24.
Charter-Kimberly was holding a rifle and a handgun, Linhardt said.
“All three suspects confessed to shooting the rifle at a makeshift target range that was facing Pirates Road,” Linhardt said.
Linhardt said it was not immediately known if the three lived at the Kings Cove Road home.
As of Friday afternoon, each was in Monroe County jail on charges of unlawful discharge of a firearm and culpable negligence. The first charge is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, and culpable negligence is a second-degree misdemeanor with a penalty of up to 60 days in jail.
Information about their legal representation was not immediately available.
