Thanksgiving morning 'prank' turns to manslaughter

[RamboLiberal]

MANCHESTER, VT - A man who was born on Christmas Day is charged with killing his friend on Thanksgiving Day, police said.

Nicholas Bell, 23, is charged with Manslaughter in the shooting death of Jeffrey Charbonneau, 24, Thursday morning, police said.

Investigators with the Manchester Police Department said that Bell told them he tried to wake up his friend Thursday morning by using an air rifle as a prank. However, at 8:10 AM Thanksgiving morning Bell allegedly instead used a loaded .22 caliber rifle, hitting Charbonneau in the chest. Charbonneau died at the scene.

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S1855719.shtml?cat=300

Stupid - any gun short of a water pistol is not a toy!

[Duer 157099]

1. How is the birthday of the shooter relevent?

Unless they mean to equate him with Jesus or something?

Very odd. And a tragic story.

[RamboLiberal]

2. I wondered that as well about the birthday n/t

[tblue37]

3. Local newspaper articles often have that sort of ridiculous

non sequitur. I think the reporters think that such "clever" references add spice and color to their articles. They are wrong, of course, but I think that is what they are trying to do.

[SteveM]

7. Non-sequitur as well as numerology and eye-cocking irony, I guess. nt

[TheWraith]

4. What the fuck kind of "prank" is that?

"Gee, it would be a real laugh riot if I shot him in the chest"?

[lawodevolution]

5. So is this the only shooting death on thanksgiving?

if you want to use an anecdote to make it look like we have a crisis with gun violence, the only thing I can conclude from this is we had only one gun related murder on that day, which would be a huge reduction. We probably had hundreds of deaths involving motor vehicles though.

[PavePusher]

6. If he could confuse a .22 rifle with an an air rifle...

I'm betting someone was intoxicated, or not at all the "talented, good kid(s)" one of the commenters claims.