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Last updated on Friday, June 15, 2012
(INDIANAPOLIS) - Police arrested a 12-year-old Columbus boy for firing a bullet with a hammer that grazed a teenage girl’s neck.
"He told me and Jaleel to watch it," said the boy's friend, James Burns.
Burns and another buddy, Jaleel Shipley, were standing outside their friend's house on the 500 block of 12th Street, watching him take a hammer to a .22 caliber cartridge.
"He just started taking these bullets and lighting them and they would just pop on his porch," said Shipley.
Suddenly, Shipley said, he heard a "Pow!" and one of the bullets flew off and grazed the neck of a 15-year-old girl who just happened to be walking by with friend.
"It started gushing out blood pretty much," said Burns.
The girl suffered a cut in her neck and is expected to recovery. The boy was taken to a juvenile detention center.
His neighbor, who did not want his identity revealed, told Fox59 he's found shells with plier markings in the yard before.
"That was the only way I can imagine him discharging that round is by putting them into pliers and hitting with a blunt object or pointed object on the primer to ignite the powder," said the neighbor.
He added that it's more dangerous than using a gun, because there is no barrel and the bullet can fly in any direction.
"It can enter any part of the body. It can enter the eye, it can enter the throat... even go into the heart."
Shipley and Burns said no one expected the bullet to hit anyone and the boy was worried about the girl's condition.
"We had no idea, because he'd done it before and nothing happened," said Burns.
He doesn't think his friend is going to play with bullets again.
"He's probably scared he would hit somebody else," said Burns.
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