BILLINGS - A family home on Blue Creek Road just south of Billings was shot Sunday afternoon, and although it was an accident, the family was still rattled.
It's the last thing most should worry about — a bullet flying through the walls of our homes and ending up on the kitchen floor. But for Sandy Stanley, that is exactly what happened.
"The fear as far as a parent, I mean, anything could have happened," Stanley said. "We're both lucky that the bullet didn't hit either one of us."
Stanley and her son, Hayden Phelps, were sitting in the living room having a conversation when they were interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
“All of a sudden, there’s just this loud noise out of nowhere," Phelps said. "And then I hear a bunch of clanging noises in the kitchen because that’s where the bullet had landed. So, it was banging off of a bunch of things."
Ultimately, Phelps found the bullet lying on the kitchen floor.
“I was looking at it and I was like ‘that’s a bullet,'" Phelps said as he showed the bullet to MTN. "It was warm obviously, so I knew it had been shot recently."
The family didn't know where the bullet had entered through the walls, and even a visit with the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office couldn't solve that.
“I even asked the sheriff, ‘have you ever seen anything like this before?’" said Stanley. "And he was like, ‘this is the strangest thing that I have seen today.'"
But it isn't the first time something like this has happened in this area. Another Billings resident, Courtney Winter, said her dad's home in the Blue Creek area has been shot multiple times in the past five years.
“The house has gotten shot over by our kitchen window a couple times, which is kind of scary because we have kiddos,” Winter said.
Fortunately for all, the intent doesn't appear to be malicious, as both Winter and Stanley attribute the bullets to accidental hunting incidents.
“People who live in the area, they don’t realize that there’s houses over the hill," Winter said. "So, they take their shot not really seeing that there is a house right there."
Stanley isn't asking people to stop hunting in the area, but rather to be a little more cautious. She knows that this close call could have ended much differently.
“I really just think that it’s important for people to beware of what’s behind you, what your backdrop is, what’s your surroundings," Stanley said. "Because this could’ve turned out way worse than what it did."
