Toying With Deadly Force

Pellet guns could pass for firearms

By GABE WELLS
WHEELING — A gun flashed out the window. The teenage suspect inside pulled the trigger. The projectile rocketed directly toward the chest of a 9-year-old Wheeling boy.

It wasn’t a bullet that hit Michael Butts, but there were dangers involved in that pellet-gun shooting that could have changed — or even taken — a person’s life.

On May 15, a Jeep Wrangler rolled down Valley View Avenue in what’s typically a peaceful Wheeling neighborhood. A passenger in that Wrangler leaned out the window and shot Michael in the chest with an Airsoft pellet gun as his mother Tina looked on. The shooter yelled, “Bullseye,” before the vehicle sped away. The pellet left a small welt on the boy’s chest.

Michael still thinks about the shooting, and his mother said her son is still “a little traumatized.” But he’s basically OK.

His father is not.

“It makes me sick and furious they could do this,” Ron Butts said. “I’m very upset. They had no feelings about shooting a 9-year-old kid. They have no thought for life. I saw how hurt and scared (Michael) was.”

Ron Butts isn’t the only person angry over the situation. Shooters Inc. owner Bill Monahan said the suspected shooter could have seriously injured Michael Butts if he’d shot him in the face or eye. He said the teen suspect in the shooting also could been have been killed.

“What if an officer thought (the gun) was real and shot him,” Monahan said. “What if someone thinks they’re pointing a real gun at them. There’s no excuse. With people like that, I have no sympathy for them when the law crushes them. They don’t want me on the jury. Those type of people take away our rights. People who do stupid things make us lose our liberties.”

There were mothers and children in the area when Michael Butts was shot with that pellet. Ron Butts said the situation placed everyone in the area in serious danger.

“They sped away,” Ron Butts said. “They flew out of here, and they could have really hurt someone. They sped away because they knew they did something wrong. They need to be punished and something needs to be done.”

Wheeling Police Chief Kevin Gessler said the investigation is nearing its end. He said he is confident all the teens involved in Michael Butts’ shooting have been identified and the matter will be referred to juvenile authorities once it is complete.

“We’re not completely done, but we’re about there,” Gessler said.

Tina Butts said she spoke recently with Gessler, and she is pleased with the progress of the investigation. She hopes her son’s story keeps others from being victimized in the same way.