Woman shot in the leg at Pennsylvania gun show


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.
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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.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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