Woman shot in the leg at Pennsylvania gun show

Woman shot in the leg at Pennsylvania gun show
(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

A woman was shot in the leg Saturday at a gun show in central Pennsylvania, police say, after a gun accidentally went off during a vendor's demonstration.

The incident took place at the Eagle Arms Gun Show at the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds, The Associated Press reports. Vendor Geoffrey Hawk, 44, was running a booth for his company, In Case of Emergency Enterprises. Hawk told police he believed the gun was unloaded when he showed a 25-year-old woman how to use a concealed-carry wallet holster. The woman was hit and treated for a wound to her thigh, and has since been released from a local hospital.

Hawk told police he had gone through 20 different demonstrations before the shooting without incident, and thought that perhaps when he went to conduct background checks someone could have come up to the unattended gun on display and loaded it.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The show's organizer, Joel Koehler, said that his staff checks all guns to make sure they are not loaded before they can enter. There was a large sign on display that said "No Loaded Weapons," and Koehler said it was the first time a shooting had happened at one of his shows.

The Columbia County district attorney's office will soon decide whether or not Hawk will face charges in relation to the shooting.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.