Washington state appeals court judges had lots of questions for lawyers at a hearing about whether a gun owner should be prosecuted in a Bremerton school shooting that critically injured a 9-year-old girl.
Kitsap County prosecutors have charged Douglas Bauer with third-degree assault in the February shooting that injured Amina Kocer-Bowman at Armin Jahr Elementary School. The 9-year-old son of Bauer’s then-girlfriend took the gun from his house and brought it to school in a backpack. The weapon fired accidentally.
Bauer’s lawyer, Wayne Fricke, told the judges Monday that the case shouldn’t proceed because Bauer did nothing to cause the assault.
Guest Judge C.C. Bridgewater asked the prosecution how Bauer could possibly have caused the assault. Deputy Prosecutor Jeremy Morris replied that Bauer allowed the boy to “sleep in a room of loaded guns” and that without that access, the shooting couldn’t have happened.
The Associated Press
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