BUCKSPORT, Maine — Lori Stubbs and her family enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at their rural Bucks Mills Road home on Sunday despite the sound of round after round of gunshots they heard in the not-too-far distance.
But that feeling of relaxation shattered later when Stubbs saw a big bullet hole in the fender of her minivan and another mark from a bullet that apparently had ricocheted off the back of the vehicle.
“My 10-year-old daughter was riding her bike in the driveway. All afternoon she was doing that,” Stubbs, who said that she is generally not against guns at all, said Thursday. “If I did this as a gun owner, I would be so distraught. I damaged someone’s property, but more importantly, I could have killed a child.”
State and local police are taking the matter seriously, she said, and are investigating where the gunshots came from. Earlier Thursday, law enforcement officials came to her property to map out the entry point of the bullet and try to pinpoint which direction it came from, Stubbs said.
“At this point, they’re doing a full investigation,” she said. “I think this will make people aware that we have to crack down on this kind of thing.”
Both she and Chief Sean Geagan of the Bucksport Police Department said they believe it likely that the gunshots came from people who were doing target practice. According to Stubbs, the gunfire she heard all afternoon sounded as if it came from an automatic or semi-automatic rifle being shot northwest of Bucks Mills Road, in the direction of Route 46.
“It is definitely a safety concern,” Geagan said. “We want to look into it and keep people as safe as we possibly can.”
He said the Police Department is working with other agencies, including the Maine Warden Service and Maine State Police, to look into what happened.
Geagan said that police always tell people who are target practicing to be very careful. He said he didn’t know yet precisely what type of gun was shot or what caliber bullet struck the minivan.
Stubbs said the police recovered one bullet but did not confirm its caliber. When she took her van to the repair shop, she was told it would cost $1,200 to fix the bullet hole. Her automobile insurance company representative said it was the first claim he or she had ever processed that involved bullet holes.
“If we can link these bullets to [particular] guns from people, then the insurance company can go back for damages,” she said. “Of course there’s negligence there.”
Stubbs also said that she feels that Bucksport’s lack of zoning ordinances to regulate target practice in her neighborhood is a problem.
“We need some sort of gun control in instances like this,” she said. “We need to bring awareness that these people are being really careless. Any bullet can travel quite a distance.”