ST. GEORGE — A St. George man faces charges after police say his black powder gun was mistakenly fired and the bullet traveled through a wall, striking his neighbor.
Axel Greggory Lelacheur, 29, was arrested and charged Wednesday with three misdemeanor offenses, including reckless endangerment, discharging a firearm within city limits and intoxication.
The arrest stems from an incident that began with a 911 call on Friday reporting a gunshot at an apartment complex on Riverside Drive on Friday shortly after 6 p.m. in St. George.
According to charging documents filed with the court, the caller told emergency dispatch she was struck by a bullet and was bleeding inside the apartment.
Following their initial response to the scene, investigators spoke to hospital staff who said the round entered the left side of the patient’s torso and then traveled through the abdomen and became lodged on the right side of her body.
Once it entered, the bullet went around the spleen and colon, missing both, but as it continued, it pierced her pancreas, liver and stomach. The injuries, investigators noted, were significant and “will require a lifestyle change for her moving forward.”
When police initially arrived on scene, they found the victim sitting on a recliner in the living room with a gunshot wound to her left side. She told officers she was in the bathroom when she was struck by the bullet. She was then transported to St. George Regional Hospital by ambulance.
While officers tended to the injured party, Lelacheur was initially detained while officers assessed the scene.
Inside Lelacheur’s apartment, officers noticed two black-powder revolvers on the couch, neither of which had a cylinder attached. They also found a six-shot cylinder with five of the chambers loaded, and on the wall directly across from the chair they discovered a hole approximately 1.1 centimeters in diameter.
Investigators noted there were empty beer cans strewn about the apartment and a bottle of whiskey on the table.
Inside of the next-door apartment, investigators found a hole in the wall of the bathroom that was the same size as the hole in Lelacheur’s apartment, as well as holes through the folds of the shower curtain.
The damage to the shower curtain was consistent with a bullet traveling through multiple layers of fabric before it struck the victim, the report states, and the trajectory of the bullet was also consistent with the victim’s wound.
Lelacheur told officers he was reloading his pistol. He placed six rounds in the cylinder and placed it back into the firearm. He said he pulled the hammer back and noticed it failed to engage in the half-cocked position, thus the safety would have been engaged. Instead, the hammer abruptly snapped forward, striking the primer, which caused the weapon to discharge.
As he reloaded the gun, he reportedly told police, “a round was accidentally discharged and it went through the shared wall” into his neighbor’s apartment.
Detectives noted that the chair Lelacheur was sitting in at the time was located directly across from the bullet hole in the common wall.
As soon as the smoke cleared, the suspect told police he realized what had happened and ran over to his neighbor’s apartment to check on her, and when he walked in, he said he found her lying on the recliner in her living room holding her side.
The report states that Lelacheur told officers he had been drinking alcohol for a few hours, and investigators noted the smell of alcohol on his breath, his slurred speech and signs indicating possible intoxication. A breathalyzer was administered, and he reportedly registered a blood alcohol level of .075, leading investigators to suspect he was intoxicated.
Based on the evidence and the suspect’s own admission that he had been drinking for hours and was loading a gun in his living room, investigators found that it was “reasonable to believe Axel was reckless in that he was knowingly loading a firearm while intoxicated.” Lelacheur was aware that his conduct could constitute a risk to his neighbor, the report said.
On the other hand, the investigation revealed that as soon as the suspect saw that a round had struck the wall, he “immediately rushed to the victim’s apartment to check on her.”
The charges were submitted to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review, and on Wednesday, five days after the incident, the suspect was arrested and the case was filed.
The victim’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with the costs associated with the injuries she sustained during the incident.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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