Woman reports gunfire near horse stable

Several mysterious gunshots and a wounded goose led an Indian Land woman to call authorities to her horse stable late last month.

A sheriff’s deputy spoke with the woman along Henry Harris Road on Feb. 23, according to a Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office incident report.

The woman reported she was standing in her field feeding horses when she heard gunshots. At first, she wasn’t worried because she’s heard gunfire in the area before, the report said.

“(The woman) stated she was on the way to feed another group of horses when she heard two more gunshots,” the responding deputy wrote in the report. “Out of the second burst of gunfire, she observed a goose that was 15 feet from her location on the ground fall over.”

The woman scooped up the injured goose and made her way back to her stables, where she called 911, the report said.

The woman told the deputy she was concerned for the safety of her horses, but was not sure from which direction the shots were fired.

Deputies checked the area for the possible shooter, but did not find anyone, the report said.

The responding deputy also spoke with an agent from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources who responded to the scene and contacted a care facility to treat the injured goose.

Sheriff’s Maj. Matt Shaw said the case is still open and has been assigned to an investigator, though deputies have not been able to locate the shooter.

“Deputies have canvassed the area and talked to a lot of neighbors, but none of them had any new information,” Shaw said. “It doesn’t seem like someone was doing target practice like the incident with the horse. This one seems to be out of nowhere.”

Shaw was referencing a case from August 2011 where an Indian Land horse owner found one of his horses shot to death in a pasture area along Old Church Road. Deputies investigated a nearby, homemade shooting range outside a neighbor’s house, though no criminal charges were filed.

The shooting led to the creation of a committee, made up of residents, county officials and members of the sheriff’s office, who discussed at length the possibility of crafting a county shooting ordinance, though the idea never gained traction.

In contrast to that case, Shaw said deputies found no evidence of target shooting in the Feb. 23 case.

“Nothing in the report says there are any neighbors target shooting. We did contact DNR in case it was somebody hunting unlawfully, but there’s no information about that and the neighbors don’t know about anyone shooting in the area,” Shaw said. “We’ve hit a little bit of a dead end.”

Contact reporter Chris Sardelli at (803) 416-8416