A Steger, Illinois, man has been charged with two counts of criminal recklessness after shooting a friend as the two pointed guns at each other without realizing at least one was loaded, according to a court document.
Griffith Police officers responded to a report of a shooting call around 4:15 p.m. Aug. 18 at a house in the 1000 block of Ash Place when they found a man lying on the couch with a towel up to the right side of his neck without an exit wound, a probable cause affidavit said. A witness at the scene told police that he and two friends had been out in Chicago all night and when they returned home in the morning, a fourth man joined them to hang out, records said.
The men started talking about guns and one witness went to his brother’s room and grabbed his handgun, the affidavit said. He and one of the other man were returning from upstairs later, records said, and as they approached the kitchen, the heard a “pop.”
They walked in to find one of the men, Deshon Alexander, 20, with a gun in his hand and man behind him “not looking ‘OK,'” court records said. Alexander immediately dropped the gun and started applying pressure to the injured man’s wounds, records said.
After his arrest, Alexander told police that he and the man he shot were playing with two pistols the third man brought down when they switched, and Alexander pulled the trigger on the one that happened to be loaded, records said. Alexander said he’d been smoking marijuana prior to the shooting, records said.
The injured man was taken to the University of Chicago Hospital’s neurological intensive care unit, documents said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
