The 34-year-old victim died after being shot by a hunter Saturday on the first day of the deer hunting season, a state official says.
A 34-year-old woman was killed in a hunting accident Saturday morning in Hebron on the first day of deer hunting season.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, a heavily wooded area 200-300 yards off Greenwood Mountain Road in the Oxford County town, according to John MacDonald, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The shooting happened at midmorning, sometime around 10 a.m., he said.
Authorities have identified the shooter as a 38-year-old man who was part of a small hunting party that included at least one other person. He was being interviewed by the Maine Warden Service.
MacDonald said officials are still trying to determine exactly what the woman was doing in the area. Wardens say they don’t know whether she was hunting or in the woods for another reason, the Sun Journal reported.
“It looks as if she was alone, and we don’t have any other witnesses on her behalf, so that’s what’s making it a little more difficult,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald did not immediately release the names of the woman or the hunter who shot her.
Officers from the warden service, Oxford County Sheriff’s Office and Maine State Police responded, and MacDonald said the wardens will remain at the scene through most of the weekend.
The last hunting fatality in Maine was in 2012, when William Briggs, 61, of Windham shot Peter Kolofsky, 46, in Sebago early in the hunting season, the Sun Journal reported. Briggs was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years in prison, with all but 45 days suspended.
Last year there were four hunting-related firearm injuries in Maine, three of which were self-inflicted, according to DIF&W.
This story will be updated.
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