A woman allegedly counted down from three before firing a gun towards her neighbour as he knelt down fixing a fence in his garden.
The neighbour had been trying to fix a post that he’d installed in the wrong place when he was reportedly fired at. The day’s DIY ended with him running indoors and asking his wife to call police.
Neighbour Paula Kohensky, 60, is accused of opening fire during a dispute over the boundary between their two homes in Missouri. Investigators say that a security camera captured her pointing a handgun towards the fence.
According to court documents, the footage shows Kohensky standing beside her husband with the weapon angled downwards. The gun then appears to discharge. Her husband is said to have then taken it from her before they both went indoors.
Kohensky has given police a different account, saying that the weapon went off accidentally. She did, however, acknowledge that she was holding it at the time.
She faces charges of first-degree assault or attempted assault and armed criminal action. Court records show that she’s currently being held on a $500,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for December 2.
The alleged shooting happened at around 8pm on Sunday, October 11, in St. Charles County, near the city of St. Louis. Police said that a property line disagreement involved Kohensky, her husband and the couple next door.
The victim told investigators that he’d been working on the fence that evening when he needed to correct the position of a metal post. He’d fitted it in the wrong place and brought out an electric grinder to cut through it.
According to court documents cited by First Alert 4, he was kneeling on the ground while using the tool.
With the grinder running, he heard someone shouting. That was followed by the verbal countdown of ‘3, 2, 1’ and then a gunshot, he told police. He abandoned the work and ran back inside his home.
Once inside, he asked his wife to contact the police. She reported to them that someone had shot at her husband. Officers then began investigating what had happened on the other side of the fence.
Police said that they found spent handgun casings near the spot where Kohensky was alleged to have been standing. The court documents didn’t specify whether the man suffered any injuries or not.
Officers initially struggled to speak to Kohensky, according to the probable cause statement. She allegedly refused to come out of her house when they arrived. Around half an hour later, she emerged and spoke to investigators.
Kohensky told them that she had gone into her back garden to walk her dog that night. She said that she’d taken a handgun outside with her.
While there, she said that she heard a loud metallic noise coming from the fence. She also described seeing sparks flying beneath a tarp that covered part of it.
Kohensky said that she then spotted what she believed was her neighbour’s shadow. According to the court documents, she shouted: ‘Get away from my fence.’
She maintained that the gun discharged accidentally while she was holding it. Investigators reviewed surveillance footage from the neighbouring couple’s home as part of their inquiries.
Kohensky also told police that she had a ‘history of harassment and stalking issues’ involving the neighbours. She claimed that the problems had continued for several months.
The case is due back in court for the preliminary hearing in December.