Police: Celebration gunshot narrowly misses woman

One person’s celebration nearly became someone else’s tragedy Thursday night, police said.

A 22-year-old man grabbed his older brother’s handgun late Thursday night in west Wichita, stepped outside and fired a shot, Lt. James Espinoza said. The bullet struck the house next door, passing through the outside wall into a bedroom where it narrowly missed a woman reading in bed with her husband next to her.

The incident was reported just before 11:30 p.m. Thursday in the 11400 block of West Bekemeyer, Espinoza said. That’s near Central and Maize Road.

A police report on the incident indicates the shot was fired from the back porch. Espinoza said there was no history of conflict between the residents of the two houses.

“Apparently, he had been watching the Wichita State game,” Espinoza said of the suspect, and the shot may well have been fired in celebration because the Shockers had just beaten Arizona.

“The timeline” for that explanation “would have been accurate,” he said.

The 22-year-old man was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on suspicion of two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, records show.

The 72-year-old woman who was reading at the time of the gunfire was frightened by the incident but otherwise unharmed. Her 74-year-old husband was also uninjured.

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 1:50 PM with the headline "Police: Celebration gunshot narrowly misses woman."