Near miss illustrates need for gun caution
Photo by Mandi Bateman Mark and Raquel Gundert survived a near miss when a bullet came through the wall of their house and lodged in their mattress while they were sleeping.
Courtesy Photo The arrow shows the line of travel from the bullet hole in the wall to the bed, where the bullet remains lodged too deep to find without destroying the mattress.
Courtesy Photo The bullet hole through the Gundert’s wall.
Courtesy Photo The gun shot had an upward trajectory, as the bedroom wall that it went through was on the top floor of the house.
Courtesy Photo Looking out from the balcony, where Mark Gundert heard the series of gunshots.
BONNERS FERRY — Mark and Raquel Gundert where awakened early in the morning by a loud noise on Nov. 30, in their home on Pleasant Valley Loop.
“I thought it was part of the bed frame,” said Mark Gundert. “We have wood slats underneath the mattress and they are not the sturdiest, so I thought maybe one of them broke. It was a loud crash-boom type of thing. That’s what I thought it was, so I went back to sleep.”
Mark — a retired National City Fire Department Fire Suppression Captain and a rated NRA Expert in High Power Rifles — awoke again around 7 a.m. when he heard gunshots.
“I shot for many years at the Fire or Police and Fire CA Olympics and the Western States Police and Fire Games,” said Mark, who won about 50 medals in various shooting events.
“There was approximately four in succession. There was probably about a second or so between each shot,” Mark explained. “So I went on the balcony outside our bedroom and looked out and another one came down our way and I could hear the report and then zinged right next to our driveway. So they were coming our way. All the shots were.”
When Mark Gundert returned to the bedroom, he noticed something immediately.
“I saw the big hole,” he said. There was a hole through their bedroom wall, and another in the mattress, located about 18 inches from the wall. The second bullet hole was about three inches below where Mark Gundert had been laying.
“It was my experience that this was definitely a high powered rifle, it had a really loud report,” said Mark. “It was probably a full metal jacket round.”
They contacted the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office, who responded along with Idaho Fish and Game. According to the case report, they went to the field where they believed the shots had originated, searching numerous locations in the general area for potential hunters. None were found.
“The field where we think the shot might have come from, the closest end of that field was 500 yards from this guy’s house,” said a Boundary County Sheriff spokesman.
“A lot of people in Boundary County grew up hunting wherever they wanted to hunt,” said the Sheriff spokesman. “It wasn’t as built up, occupied, and inhabited as it is now. Historical hunting grounds could now have houses right in the middle of them, or right on the fringes of them, and a high-powered rifle bullet obviously carries quite a distance.”
“They still carry enough energy to pierce a wall and go through a bed. It could have killed that guy... four inches,” said the spokesman.
“I never thought anything about it before. Now I’m a nervous wreck,” said Raquel Gundert, talking about all the times she has been out gardening and heard gunshots.
“People just get complacent around their guns,” said the Sheriff’s spokesman. “Be careful. Be aware of your surroundings. It isn’t Boundary County of the 1980s anymore. There are houses and people living everywhere now.”
The investigation is ongoing and anyone that has any information is encouraged to call the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office at 208-267-3151