Mother killed by stray bullet fired across Ohio lake

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A woman in Ohio’s Akron city has been killed by a stray bullet that hit her while she was sitting on her couch on 4 July.

Chelsey Jones, 26, may have been struck by a bullet fired by someone celebrating the Independence Day holiday some 1,000ft away and across a lake, police said, adding that two 9mm bullet casings were found on a boat dock that can be seen from the house across the Summit Lake.

Jones, the mother of two daughters aged six and three, had been watching television on her couch moments before she was found injured in a pool of blood on the living room floor at around 11.30pm.

She was discovered by her boyfriend, who thought that she had fallen off the couch, and called 911. Doctors discovered that she had been shot only after she was taken to hospital.

“Police first started asking questions about if we had weapons in the house or if she was suicidal. And I’m like, ‘Why are you asking about guns?’ That’s when they broke the news that it was a gunshot wound to the head,” said Jones’s boyfriend Michael Hartney.

“How in the world could this happen? It’s just [a] one-in-a-million freak, senseless accident,” he added, according to TV channel News5.

“There are so many mixed emotions right now. I’m beyond angry and I’m just trying to keep my cool for my daughters. It’s not going to do any good for them to see me upset and angry like that. Nothing good comes from that. So I’m just going to hug them and comfort them and just hope that they catch whoever did this.”

Police said it would be difficult to trace the bullets that were found.

“To narrow that down or to trace it back is going to be an extremely difficult task, one they’re [detectives] committed to undertaking by the way, but it will be extremely difficult,” said Lt Michael Miller.

Additional reporting by agencies